How did you get out of Vim before you knew its hotkeys and commands?

Bought a new computer, threw the old one out.
- We're dangerously close to revealing the real reason I keep trying new operating systems...
- That's an easy fix. I had to burn my house down
- This is the way.
- The Apple approved way of exiting vim

I was introduced to Linux with Vim so it's actually Nano that confuses me...
- The good thing about nano is that it has clear instructions for how to close it right there immediately in front of you
  
  Not if aren't familiar with control characters. Might was well be three seashells...
  
  Look at Mr. Bigshot here reading instructions!
- I've always been using nano, but since I refused to ever read the docs, I'm still confused
  
  I can't deal with nano hotkeys

CTRL+face on keyboard. I guess Z got me out, but who knows.
- Literally facerolled vim, nice

From the torrent, the deluge, the unending tidal wave of this exact meme in various formats. The "exit vim difficult" meme must constitute at least 50% of online content regarding nix and nix-adjacent systems. It is so stale that Slackware considers it outdated. It is the "mayonnaise is spicy" equivalent of funny. It is the white bread, picket fence stereotype of meme culture, yes offense. I'd like to say that it's beating a dead horse, but the horse is gone; its flesh has been tenderized, pulverized, and evaporated from the sum total of energy imparted by the constant beating. If the heat death of the universe were to happen tomorrow, and from the uniform vacuum energy a Boltzmann brain were to spontaneously form, it will have been already tired of this meme.
But to answer the question, it was either that, or the big
text

type :q<Enter> to exit
splash that appears when I open it with an empty buffer, and following its instructions.
No offense to you or your house, but I'm really tired of this meme.
- splash that appears when I open it with an empty buffer, and following its instructions.
  That's the key to the problem, I have almost never open vim with an empty buffer, almost only used it to open files directly. Since there is no nice splash screen telling you how to exit when you use vi <your_file>, this meme happens.
- No offense, but I was dumb enough to wonder why they put a space before ":" and thought something must be broken. Obviously, pressing q and Enter (or typing Enter) also didn't work and proved to me that this editor must have crashed in a strange way.
  So every time I see vim, it reminds me about my stupidity. The meme eases the pain.
- Even if the meme is old, Linux has grown quite a lot in recent years, so there are people who are not tired of the meme yet, and if you stay in some community for a long time, you will notice that many things will be constantly discussed over and over again
- I get tired of it sometimes but every once in a while I'll come across a clever twist on it that makes me laugh

"killall vim" in another terminal tab
- who needs another tab
  :!killall -9 vim

:!killall -9 vim
- Cuz it's kill dash nine. No more CPU time.

I guess it was in the 80s, open a new xterm, ps -edaf | grep vi, kill the process, then man vi to read how to exit properly.
This is how I learnt unix, do a ls in /bin /usr/bin /etc, man every command
- If it was the 80s, didn't you have to feed punch cards through the mainframe first? /s
  
  Already had huge X Terminal on HP mainframe, using X11R3 and mwm etc. xeyes, xload, xbiff, xterm, it was the time!
- Similar. I'd guess it was something like ctrl-z; ps -e vi; kill -9 procnum on a vt100 terminal.

hold button to restart computer

Can't relate I use nano
- You say it like ^X was somehow intuitive

Long before I used vim, some dude shared a bunch of vim memes with ":q!" in them.
It was actually vi on some ye olde unix machine, but I remembered the meme and got out, searched up how to use vim, and then jumped back in to edit the file lol.

Reinstalled Linux

pull the computer cord out of the wall

why'd ya make it weird, OP

I guess just because how the question was laid out, I'm disqualified as I was taught how to use it the first time I used it. :P
with my first linux -system, I had an experienced friend to hold my hand while installing, configuring and usage - including vim. So, the first thing he taught me was how to exit it. This was sometime in ... 2003-ish?

Probably closed the terminal emulator it was running in and opened a new one before trying to find documentation at my leisure. One of the luxuries of learning Unix commands in a graphical environment.
For a more drastic noob story, I once rebooted a computer because I couldn't get out of GWBASIC. I was familiar with QBASIC at the time and that was a lot easier to get out of if you didn't know what you were doing.

Ctrl +Z
- then kill %1

Honestly?
By looking up the command. It took like two seconds and that was nearly twenty years ago. And I've been using it off and on since then (only off because I've not been consistently using Linux, not because I'm using a different terminal text editor; when on *NIX, vim/vi is pretty much all I've used on the terminal)
- I don't think this person was sharing this meme looking for honest answers, but since you did, I think this is the correct answer.

control-z, kill %1

Ctrl z

I can't remember what I did with vim the first time I used it, but whenever I'm stuck in a cli program and want to go back to the shell, I usually tried ctrl+c first, and if doesn't work, crtl+z.

North Carolina style, head to your nearest electric substation and open fire*
*Doesn't work for laptops, instead just shoot the laptop

I started on MacVim, so I could just use cmd+q. And by the time I used vim on the terminal I knew all about :commands
- That should be illegal. Any editor containing the letters vi together must not use any keys except those that can be sent over a vt100 terminal!
  
  Visual Studio: 😳

A tutorial tried to get me to install emacs the other day. I guffawed in nano.

I closed the terminal, the second time I googled how to quit

Shutting down my computer with the button, restarting, and installing Emacs.
- Shutting down my computer with the button, restarting, Hahaha exactly what I was going to say and installing Emacs. Wait

installed emacs into vim...

For me its more "who are you" "I am on every system but you never use me"
vi, tac, less, more, ...
- Why don't you use less? It's great
  
  Less is for scrolling through output right? And what does more do?
  I just use cat and a terminal emulator that can scroll lol

That's what she said.

VI was so pathetic and old - blasphemy! - that I almost gave up on college and the career as I mistakenly thought in my grief, at having to suffer that dreck, that it was all gonna be like that.
Thankfully someone showed me anything different. About 5 options, actually . I picked one and I'm happy to use anything else (eg sed-i) unless vi is the only thing left; and then I decide whether it's worth it.
What a sad old callback to the Vietnam war that is (not for the name; it's that old).
I know the vi cabal will be upset to hear someone who tried it actually doesn't worship it. They're gonna downvote me. That's okay. I got over that hate 30 years ago.
Just remember : there's probably something else you can use and experience more joy, if they haven't demanded everything else be removed.