People are tweeting all the retro things from their childhood

Hands up who remembers floppy disks?

vhs player

by Thea de Gallier |
Published on

When American radio host Eric Alper tweeted inviting his followers to remember something that "if you told a young person they wouldn't understand", he started quite the conversation.

Reading through the resulting thread makes for amazing reminiscing material for anyone who grew up in the 80s or 90s. From taping your favourite songs off the radio to using floppy disks and looking things up in the dictionary, it's a what's-what of all the things we used to do in the pre-internet world.

So, how many of these do you remember?

1. Renting video tapes

That fury when you got it home to find the previous watcher hadn't rewound it.

2. Life before Google

3. When rewinding is an art

To some people, this might just look like a cassette tape and a pencil. But if you're of a certain age, you'll know that the pencil was sometimes the only way to wind the tape back to the beginning, by twisting it around in the holes. Seriously, it was a fine art.

4. Landlines

Before mobiles existed, your brain was the only place you'd store your contacts.

5. No Netflix

Movies happened in the cinema, and only the cinema.

6. Life before the internet

Seriously, how did we manage to do stuff?

7. When writing to someone in another country was a thing

You didn't even have to know the pen pal. Sometimes your school would find one for you, and you'd have to attempt to write them letters in your awful GCSE-level German. Those were the days.

8. Before everyone knew smoking was bad

Not just planes. Tube trains, inside pubs, and offices too. This is one we don't miss.

9. When running late was simply not an option

If you said you'd meet outside Woolworths (RIP) at lunchtime, then that's what you did.

10. Streaming? What's that?

The anticipation!

11. Dial-up internet

And the NOISE it made!

12. When life without the internet is unthinkable

Yeah, it didn't quite work like that...

13. When phone battery was actually good

Damn you, iPhones.

How many of these do you remember? Tell us over at Closer's Facebook and Twitter

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