What’s a thing you miss that you’re 90% sure was objectively awful?

Life before cellphones and internet.

Did you know in 1990 only .25% of the world’s population (12.5 million) had cellphones and only .05% (2.8 million) had internet?

It feels like we sacrificed local community and connection for global information overload and disconnection sometimes.

A buddy of mine owned a video game store that I worked at for a bit. The pay was crappy and the hours were unstable and random, but I do miss working there.

Websites with frames.

Trusting the government

My first vehicles as an adult in the mid to late 90s. Objectively cheap used jalopies that I bought for a few hundred dollars but were loved because they were mine.

My first car was a 1981 Dodge Aries K-Car. The front bumper got ripped off by a guy running with no headlights while I was delivering pizzas and I literally just threw the bumper on the back seat and continued on with my deliveries, then went to my local pick-a-part and took a replacement off a different one and bolted it on myself. You just couldn't kill it.

I eventually replaced it with an 1984 Sentra that I bought at auction. I called it the "relationship killer" because the passenger door didn't open from the outside so there was no way to "open the door for your date to get in first", and half the time it didn't go into reverse, so since my dates didn't know how to drive standard transmissions, they were the one that had to push us out of parking spaces. It honked when turning left for some reason.

My point being, when things were wrong with them, they were cheap enough that you could just go to the local pick-a-part and get replacement parts. If it wasn't starting for some reason, you could stick a screw driver in the carburetor valve to give it more air. You could "own" and "tinker" on those things in ways that doing so in a new car would terrify us.

Connecting to dialup and listening to computers scream at each other over the phone line.

Like many others have said, the old, lost internet was really something special. Every website was crude and janky, poorly formatted for some specific resolution that you weren't using, and both animated clipart and midis were exciting to collect. There were websites dedicated to them. My brother and I used to fill folders on our desktop with sparkling or flaming banners, signs that read "Under Construction" and more. Same with midis. I'll never forget the first time I discovered Sublime's Santaria in midi form. It may have been my first favorite song.

I wish I could properly articulate what that all felt like. It was a similar feeling to collecting Pokémon cards as a kid. Everything was just a neat spectacle on the mid-90s internet. Then over time, as everything modernized and monetized, it lost that weird magic and became what it is today. I can't remember the last time I gave a shit about exploring a website. I no longer come across spooky animated images of a skeleton peering out of murky water and excitedly tuck it away for future viewing pleasure. The entire thing sucks now, but it probably sucked then, too.

I miss old PC Games from the early 90's.
I've reinstalled all that I remember and they sucked, but back then, they didn't.

I was an 80’s kid, and we had the best Saturday morning cartoons.
Transformers, GI Joe, Scooby Doo, Thundar the Barbarian, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Superfriends, Hurculoids, etc.

Let's make it 100%. Dial up noise, window XP startup and shutdown tune

Working in a bar

I love people. I'm a people-person, but I kno know that I am remembering it through rose-tinted lenses

Most customers were average, a few were great, a fair number were dicks

But the hours, the late nights, the cost to my own social life, the lousy pay, the inability to eat normal meals at normal times, all of that shit takes a toll

But I still have some fond memories and occasionally think about opening a bar with my woman

Oh, and I was running a place with a long-term partner. Doing that shit was the final nail in the coffin of our relationship, so fuck that...

Windows XP.

A security nightmare, had more unfinished backends than a plexiglass gloryhole.... But goddamn could that machine run

I miss my first two cars. The first was a 1989 Dodge Daytona which was probably the worst car ever made and it only lasted 6 months before the head gasket blew. The second was a 1995 Ford Escort LX sedan. This was the car that I taught myself how to drive manual transmission on. It was more reliable than the Daytona, but it still had a ton of quirks like shorts in the wiring harness in the steering column --so much so that I learned which pins to short out to hot wire it lol. I miss both of those cars because of the sense of freedom they provided to get away from an emotionally abusive home life.

The smell of leaded gasoline.
The smell of a fine cigar: I quit smoking 14 years ago but I miss that.

And I'm 200% sure they were awful.

The wait before things worked.

Yes, it's better to get what you want no delay. But the pace of life, the rhythm, has changed. I'm old, it's true, but I'm still gonna throw it out there.

Yes, it's 90% better now. But I miss waiting.

Little Caesar's as a traditional pizza parlor.

Being absolutely sure about everything.

Come to think of it, I miss school and I miss the military. They were both godawful, but I was young.

Only knowing small TVs. Step by step, displays have inarguably improved massively, and I do love my giant OLED flatscreen. But watching TV was still great fun in the before times, people still watched the hell out of it, so can we say it brings people more joy now? Or is it just technically and visually better?

I think if you're the kinda person watching beautiful premium shows, that's an experience you couldn't really get before. But I like TV that I can have on in the background, while I'm doing the dishes, and now we're expected to pay attention to details on screen. Back when half the audience had tiny, grainy or monochrome displays, shows were written to suit listening as much as watching. And it's not just scripts, shoddy visuals allowed costumes, sets and design that was evocative but cheap, in a way that cannot pass muster today.

And by comparison, it's reduced the justification for going to cinema, and even kinda made the real world look bad. It used to be worth going somewhere in person because it would look infinitely better than seeing it on a screen. But now, it can actually be a disappointment, as the carefully composed filmed version with post production actually looks more impressive than irl. It's the Connoisseurs Paradox, has it really deepend my pleasure, or merely raised my standards so much that I'm actually less satisfied?

Highlander III

Dude limewire was great. Nice logo, good color scheme, had pretty much everything. Other things have just gotten better in some ways, and worse in others. (Torrents are often way better quality, but it was nice being able to search limewire vs. searching the web and wading through sketchy torrent sites).

Windows 98

Windows XP

Dialup

The Old Internet aka when 90% of it was html and shockwave flash

Weird childhood obsessions; some were good, some were bad, some became things that defined me as an adult.

A lot of the edutainment games I played as a child. I actually went back and installed them to see what they were like through the eyes of an adult. There were a few that were still fun, but as you might be able to guess, most were pretty shitty.

That said, there have been a few things that ended up being 100% worth revisiting. CRT monitors, for an example, are unironically still kinda awesome. I just wouldn't replace my main monitors with one.

Undertale fandom — I'm no longer part of it, I'm not interested in becoming part of it again, and it was awful, but I kinda miss it.

All my friend's parents smoked when I was younger, but mine didn't so I always associated the smell of cigarettes with meeting my friends. I absolutely hate the smell today, but I still get a flash of nostalgia when I smell cigarette smoke.