Life before the internet
This was the world, kids. But not as you know it.
Sit down children, for I am about to take you on a journey you’ll never forget. Destination? The good old days.
Close your eyes and think about everything you love in life. All series of your favourite shows, YouTube stars, that Instagram filter you always use and all your go-to emojis. Now imagine they all disappeared. Poof! See ya. I’ll give you a minute to recover from this thought, this stuff of nightmares.
Ready to continue? Well, I’m going to regardless.
Now, you may think you know about pre-online life. It could be that you ironically watched a documentary about the 1990s one night. Or you went down the Google rabbit hole after your Uncle talked about how much he “loved his MegaDrive”. But you never got the chance to experience these halcyon days first hand. And and this makes me a little sad. And want to cry out as dramatically as possible “You haven’t lived!!”.
So, I am here to reveal to you, in all its wonder and slowness, a few ways the world was like before the three W’s arrived. And changed everything. For those of you reading who remember doing these things, enjoy the nostalgia.
Buckle in (yes we had seat belts then), you’re about to go on one hell of a ride.
TV
Putting aside the whole “Traditional TV is dying. Right?” thing aside, the act of watching TV was pretty much the same. Only ‘binge-watching’ meant the Eastenders omnibus on Sunday. Now, recording what was on TV, that was a life bursting at the seams with technological splendour.
VHS
Welcome to the wonderful world of VHS. It stood for ‘Video Home System’. Doesn’t that alone sound amazing?
Boy, the things you could do with these bad boys. You had a set length of tape on which could record any show or film on TV. Right there, as it aired. Then, you could then play this back whenever you wanted. You could also erm… ok, that’s it. But you could do that forever. Ok, until the tape deteriorated through overuse.
Finding a certain point in the tape was a mysterious dark art, a power only a few of us could master. You would need to rewind/forward through everything after/before. Then, as the tape was rewinding/forwarding, ‘sense’ the right time to press stop. VHS gurus of the day, I bow to thee.
And there was the never-ending challenge to find space to store all these plastic bricks. A lonely VHS by the side of the video player quickly escalated into an unwieldy tower. And, sod’s law, the one you wanted was always at the bottom.
Like I said, (ahem) amazing.
VideoPlus+
What if you weren’t going to be home and wanted to record something that would be on TV when you were out, you say? Lucky you asked… Say hello to the future. Say hello to VideoPlus+.
VideoPlus+ worked like this. Every TV programme had a unique code. You looked up this code in the (printed, of course) TV guide. You entered it into your VHS player and then, like some sort of witchcraft, the video automatically recorded that programme. Even if you were not home. That’s why there is not one, but two plusses in its name. If anything deserved two plusses in its name, it was the miracle we called VideoPlus+.
I still have no idea how it worked, and I’ve seen the human race land a craft on an asteroid.
Calling people
“Hello? Hi. Erm. Hello. Err, can I speak to…please?”
A direct message or a call to the person you want to talk you? That was science-fiction when I was an awkward teenager. As the landline was dialling, you would pray that your friend would be the one to pick up. Sometimes — and it was clear they enjoyed doing this — parents would try to engage in conversation while you waited. “KILL ME NOW — WHY ARE THEY ARE TALKING TO ME?”, screamed 14-year-old me.
Don’t forget, you actually spoke to people. As in, you say words with your mouth that others hear with their ears. Even when the early mobiles and texting came in, there was none of his free or unlimited texts malarkey. They were a precious resource, and you had to choose wisely your moment to use them. Like asking for a VideoPlus+ code.
Booking cinema tickets
Think you know pain? Not if you never had to book cinema tickets via the automated phone line you don’t. I still have nightmares.
To guarantee tickets, it was either brave these automated lines, or go to the cinema in person early to buy in advance. You may be thinking “Why didn’t you turn up and buy tickets shortly before the film starts?” You naive fool! These were the days when people had far less to do. The lack of social media meant you had to engage with people around you. This meant that, by the weekend, you started to run out of things to say. So it was time to spend 2 hours in a room staring at a screen and not speaking a word to each other. You know, like what people do at restaurants nowadays. My convoluted point is that cinemas were always busy.
Think of this automated service as Neanderthal AI. But even that is being harsh on the Neanderthals. You would call the line to reserve tickets at your local cinema by interacting with voice-recognition technology. Voice-recognition technology doing its best impression of a polite middle-aged lady. From my patchy traumatic memories, I have stitched together a (much shortened) example of how the average call went:
“Hello. Welcome to [Cinema name]. Please state the film you would like to watch.”
“ The Matrix.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Can you say it again?”
“THE. MA-TRIX.”
“Did you mean ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’? If yes, say “yes”. If no, say “no.”
“No.”
“Thank you. You are booking tickets for ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Please state how many tickets you would like to purchase.”
[Sigh of resignation] “One.”
Meeting up with someone
“Let’s meet there at 7:00pm”.
Then what? Faith, that’s what. No, not the pop album by George Michael you’ve likely never heard of (although, thanks to my sister, I had that too). I meant faith they would turn up at the right place at the right time as agreed. They’re not there on time? Tough. Wait longer. All evening if you have to (but enough about my dates — that’s another Medium story).
You could look for a phone box to call their house, but then that risks SPEAKING TO THEIR FAMILY (see further up), which is a fate worse than hell.
Music
Streaming. The choice of playlists. Almost all music ever recorded at your fingertips. Pfft. This makes it all far too easy.
It all required so much more effort, and a lot has changed since back in ‘the day’. ‘The day’ being when I thought the way to win a girl’s heart was with a 90-minute cassette packed full of 70s and 80s pop music. I jest; it was mostly Boyz II Men.
How you pass on music to someone today
- Send them links to songs/a playlist
How you used to do it (the mixtape)
- Buy a 90 minute (45 minutes per side) cassette tape.
- Spend a little time (ok, hours) to plan in advance the songs you will record on each side. Your strategy is to use as much of the 45 minutes per side as possible. If you left more than 60 seconds of dead space at the end of either side, you were a complete amateur.
- Record the songs. That meant listening to every song in full as it recorded onto the tape. None of this instant drag and drop crap.
- Fill out the cassette index card listing which songs are on each side. For a touch of flair, I went for artist name in a different colour to the song name. What a maverick.
- Be patient until you saw that person to physically handover your mixtape.
- Wait and never hear what they thought of your hours of planning, thought and effort.
The last step was optional. For others.
Anyway, I made mixtapes for all kinds of people. Girls I liked that I had zero chance with and didn’t know I existed. Girls I liked who I had zero chance with, knew I existed, and laughed at the thought. And girls I liked to get over a girl I liked from one of the previous categories (who I had zero chance with).
Like I said, all kinds of people. Oh look, I’m crying.
Liked this? Then make this writer happy by clapping like there’s no tomorrow. Or clap like there is a tomorrow, but it’s one where claps are illegal.
Thanks
Kyri
