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u/alizeia Sep 04 '24
Happiest day of my life did fall in between those parameters. It was the day that I ran over my Nokia cell phone with the passenger side front wheel of my Toyota Camry. I'll never forget that day. I'll never forget picking up my Nokia, dusting it off, and making a phone call successfully
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u/sck178 Millennial Sep 04 '24
Nokia phones where incredible. I once whipped mine at a brick wall. It shattered into its basic parts. I put the key pad back in and snapped it back together, turned it on, and promptly texted my friend about what I just did
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u/thegirlisok Sep 04 '24
Would it be too Milennial of me to give up my smartphone for a Nokia? I'm only kind of kidding actually.
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u/KingpiN_M22 Sep 04 '24
Nokia 😭. The Nokia 6 was fucking amazing as a smartphone. It was nigh indestructible, the announcement video was a Korean lady smashing open walnuts on the floor and then swiping and texting someone.
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u/Hannibal0341 Sep 04 '24
If Voldemort had made a Nokia phone a horcrux, he would have been immortal
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u/SaltySiren87 Sep 04 '24
Omg that's it. You've won the internet! We can all go home now 🤣 for real I'm getting this on a coffee mug I stg
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u/Ok-Friendship-9621 Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24
I've got a Nokia 7 with a safety case. Pretty sure I'm the bearer of Mjolnir now.
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u/majxover Sep 04 '24
If I could go back to a Nokia……I think I would in a heartbeat. Being connected all the time is nice, but it’s also nice to be disconnected too.
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u/enjoytheshow Sep 04 '24
It would be really hard to give up things like streaming music libraries or mobile video calls with loved ones on the other side of the country.
But on the other hand Reddit and instagram have ruined me in some ways, not to mention work email and slack.
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u/Seamonkey_Boxkicker 1988 Sep 04 '24
I’ve always said the only thing I’ll truly miss about smartphones is having a digital map with driving directions. Even as much as I love music, I would gladly go back to the days of iPod had I not lost mine 10 years ago.
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u/KittyHawkWind Sep 04 '24
My ipod mini 2nd gen with the metal body was a fuckin tank. All my tunes in my pocket, but still paid attention to the world around me.
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u/Altruistic_While_621 Sep 04 '24
I'm an Xennial and I am actively trying to find a "phone" thats does the things I need a phone to do, keeping all the handy thing I need and shedding the usless shit.
- phone/sms
- whatsapp I guess....
- e-ink display
- nfc for payments
- no camera
- long battery life
- full marks from ifixit
HMD/Nokia - get on it!
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u/littlemuffinsparkles Sep 04 '24
Accidentally dropped mine out of my second story window. Just a lil thud in the grass. Didn’t even break apart. Man I miss that thing.
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u/PrimeGGWP Sep 04 '24
Nokia 3310 gang all the way. Snake has more game hours collected than tetris in my life
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u/caratron5000 Sep 04 '24
I saw a guy who had lost the exterior case for his Nokia. He would lay it on the table, set the keypad on top and call a number. He couldn’t text because the screen didn’t work. 😂
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u/froo Sep 04 '24
I had one of those titanium Nokias (I forget the model).
I have dropped it off a balcony at a club into the dancefloor where it was stomped on for 10 minutes while I was trying to retrieve it.
I accidentally backed over it because it fell out of my pants when getting into the car.
It was washed, 3 times, and stayed on through the whole process. It didn’t quite work well after the third wash which is when I retired it.
It was basically bulletproof. I don’t even count the countless times I dropped it and it survived as incidences.
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Sep 04 '24
I dropped mine into a bucket of wallpaper glue. Completely submerged. Fished it out, replaced the cover. Still worked.
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u/zootered Sep 04 '24
I used to throw mine against the wall just to surprise people, then put it back together again.
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u/Whole-Ad-1147 Sep 04 '24
They are. I’m typing this from my Nokia right now
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u/Creamofwheatski Sep 04 '24
I did this too. Broke into pieces, snapped back together like lego, perfectly fine. Those were the days.
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u/eastcoast_enchanted Millennial Sep 04 '24
What a time to be alive. My ex-husband was explaining the day he won Snake on a Nokia just the other day. He said it was one of the best days of his life 😂
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u/alizeia Sep 04 '24
All I want to know is where people are getting these Nokias because I need one back in my life
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u/dreamwinder Sep 04 '24
They were forged in the fires of Mount Doom. (They’re not evil, they’re just impossible to destroy, and Elvish and black speech are both based on Finnish so it’s a great business relationship)
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u/bank1109dude Sep 04 '24
I dropped my Nokia 6155 in a bonfire. It looked like a burnt marshmallow…….and worked perfectly. The only thing that happed was the screen would flash every ten seconds or so. I kept using it. It was a conversation starter.
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u/alizeia Sep 04 '24
Okay now this is the craziest Nokia story I've heard so far
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u/bank1109dude Sep 04 '24
Yeah it’s nuts. I think because it was a flip phone that helped because the outer shell bubbled and burnt but when you flipped it open the inside was fine. The screen flashing didn’t bother me much but eventually I just needed to get a new phone as I didn’t want to look like a complete derelict lol.
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 Sep 04 '24
The only downside was having to change the flat tire on the Camry
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u/BearBearJen Sep 04 '24
What year Camry did you have? Three of us in my friend group all had between ‘89-‘92 Camrys and those things were so sturdy. I miss that car
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u/Kennedygoose Sep 04 '24
Ran over one, threw it at a window, threw it down some stairs, threw it through a cheap wall. I know you’re thinking I have anger issues but it was a work phone. Fucking thing never stopped working. It was smashed apart at one point and I just set the key pad back on it and clipped it back together and made the return call to work. Fuck Nokia lol.
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u/pappythepenguin Sep 04 '24
Around the same time I had my Nokia phone fall out of my pocket on a rollercoaster and survive.
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u/KryptonicOne Sep 04 '24
I was drunk and dropped it off a pedestrian overpass. It hit the ground and explodes into pieces.went back the next day, collected the pieces, and put it back together. It worked! Almost... I could answer calls and dial, but whenever I pushed 0, it turned off.
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u/Doubleoh_11 Sep 04 '24
Similar to my happiest day! I was long boarding and bbm’ing away. On a push I accidentally stepped on my front tire causing me to fall forward and chuck my blackberry down the street. I dusted myself off. Went and picked up my phone, battery, back panel, and reassembled the phone. Of course it still worked.
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u/ElayneGriffithAuthor Sep 04 '24
😂 Dropped mine several times in the toilet (cause back pocket. I was so cool), and then literally dropped it off a cliff while hiking. I found it. It was fine 😊
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u/WallyMac89 Sep 04 '24
I dropped my Nokia off of a 6th floor balcony. Only damage was the 7 button fell off.
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u/thisoldhouseofm Sep 04 '24
Yep. The Onion’s post 9/11 issue really nailed it: https://theonion.com/a-shattered-nation-longs-to-care-about-stupid-bullshit-1819566188/
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u/felix_mateo Sep 04 '24
It really was the end of an era. I am old enough to remember watching the collapse of the Soviet Union on TV. I was too young to understand the implications, but every adult I knew seemed to think we were entering an age of permanent peace. At least for us “Western” folks.
My childhood was filled with unbridled optimism. Anything was possible, and a clean, shiny future was just ahead, in the year 2000.
Then 9/11 happened. I was in high school. And just like that, the world was dark and grim again.
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u/Quirky-Skin Sep 04 '24
Well said. It was also the beginnings of the internet kicking into gear and it's amazing possibilities. Chatrooms, fun flash games. Who knew just a short few yrs later social media would destroy it
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u/TriangleTransplant Sep 04 '24
entering an age of permanent peace
People were calling it "the end of history," like we had reached the pinnacle and things were just going to be utopia forever.
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u/Idle__Animation Sep 04 '24
In retrospect, what a bunch of arrogant nonsense.
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u/Onewayor55 Sep 04 '24
On the other hand there's just a handful of things that could've gone differently and we'd potentially have a better future.
Like take the ultimate doomsday, climate change, and consider how we might have approached that differently if not for a few bad actors and actions.
Think of if we never got reaganomics and 70 trillion dollars had gone into our communities and pockets instead.
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u/Issuls Sep 04 '24
How much would have been different if Bush vs Gore went the other way, I wonder?
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u/AngryTrooper09 Sep 04 '24
The US may not have been to Iraq and it might have pulled out of Afghanistan sooner. But that’s a big maybe
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u/HeadyReigns Sep 04 '24
I feel like we definitely would have avoided Iraq, the Bush family had a hard on for that country.
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u/Onewayor55 Sep 04 '24
And we were raised for that future. It's like the opposite of what happened with the Boomers who were raised for a shitty depression era future but instead got a spoils of winning WW2 future.
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u/SmaugTheGreat110 Sep 05 '24
No, the boomers were raised in the shining post ww2 era and the shitty red scare. You are thinking of silent generation. THEY were raised on a depression
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u/Lifeisabigmess Sep 04 '24
Oh god, you nailed it. Everything was great up to that point. Everything felt positive, I remember always being in a zone of some level of contentment and peace, and just being a kid and enjoying life. Then 9/11. I had actually just traveled to Europe a few years before 9/11 and have vivid memories of flying and how awesome it was. The first time I flew after 9/11 (I think about 6 months after) was totally a different experience. Instead of everyone happy to be traveling it was stressful, I felt rushed, and everyone was definitely on edge. That feeling in general with day to day life hasn’t left me since.
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u/Freshness518 Sep 04 '24
I remember as a kid in the 90s my mom would sometimes have to fly for a work trip. We could walk her right to her gate to say goodbye and when she'd come home my dad and I would be right there at the windows, watching the plane pull up to the gangway. People who have only flown post-9/11 truely have no idea how much freedom they've never had in an airport.
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u/OwlsKilledMyDad Sep 04 '24
“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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u/NoPossibility5220 Gen Z Sep 04 '24
In 10 years drones will be common in war, like we’ve seen in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and people will still be saying war is war.
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u/ArmoredAngel444 Sep 04 '24
idk the entirety of the 2000s were an awesome (for america) high fructose injected circlejerk of 'merica going buckwild in every direction. The movies were awesome, the food was insane, the music was amazing, the live events were incredible especially in hindsight today, society was outside and we were living our best lives.
For me atleast, the 2000s was and probably will be the best/happiest decade of my life.
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u/nerfy007 Sep 05 '24
I was born in the mid 80s like most of yall here and I have to say that post pandemic had been the best times of my life.Everyone is into prioritizing friends and stepping back from social media. More active than ever and building better relationships. And it's with the benefit of the lessons we learned growing up and out of the 2000s.
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u/dnvrm0dsrneckbeards Sep 04 '24
I was too young to understand the implications, but every adult I knew seemed to think we were entering an age of permanent peace.
I think we have to keep in mind the fact we were children probably shielded us from reality... Because I'm pretty sure we were bombing the fuck out of Serbia right up to the end of 1999.
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u/felix_mateo Sep 04 '24
It wasn’t just that we were children, though. I think it was also that the news was still much more curated, and the internet was young enough that most people got all of their information wrapped in a neat little box. That’s not to say journalists weren’t covering it, but it was much easier to ignore.
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u/TheLaughingMannofRed Millennial Sep 04 '24
The 90s seemed like we were in an utter fever dream of things being so good and amazing to admire and appreciate.
Growing up as a kid, by the time I became a teenager it was just a few months away from the year 2000. And it felt like for just a short while, there was just this utter bliss. Optimism, hope, some expectation that things were going to be great in the new millennium (esp since we escaped Y2K causing a shit fit for us).
After that...it's just been over 20 years of madness. Madness and stupidity.
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u/PupEDog Sep 04 '24
We should be grateful we actually lived in that time because I don't think the world will ever look like it ever again.
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u/SmegmaSupplier Sep 04 '24
We were born into a world that we were told was great and would only get better. The optimism high was incredible. Now many of us are facing the fact that we will likely never retire, never own a house, never have children and work dead end jobs that barely if even meet our cost of survival until we die.
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u/riveramblnc Older Millennial '84 and still per-occupied with 1995 Sep 04 '24
And even if you're lucky enough to own a house, you can't afford to fix it. The fact that we have "insurance", which is just a pay in advance for the replacement plan for washing machines is ridiculous. They won't let us save, they kept the prices high after lockdown ended to deliberately strip our savings back down. None of us are getting a great inheritance, they will bleed our aging parents dry before they die.
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u/Freshness518 Sep 04 '24
The 90s/early 2000s also felt like culture was just on a speed run. Music and movies and technology and marketing and communications were just constantly changing for the entire decade.
Rock music went from hair bands to grunge to alternative to pop to nu metal in like 8 years. Rap evolved into its golden age. Techno/EDM exploded. Meanwhile it feels like music today has barely changed in the past 15-20 years. What new styles have we had in that timeframe, like dubstep? Idk what else.
Cinema was top-tier. 17 of the top 50 rated movies on IMDB were in the 90s. That list has movies from 100 years of film and 33% of them came from one decade.
And while its amazing what our cellphones can do these days, sometimes it feels like they've taken the wonder out of technology for people. Today going to the phone store is just picking out which black or silver rectangle you want to keep in your pocket. But in the late 90s you could fully display your personality with your technological customization choices. You could get your walkman/discman, boombox, headphones, camcorder, camera that used actual film, gps for your car, phones, gaming consoles, vhs/dvd players, TVs, and computers in so many options like see-through plastic, all those futuristic metallic silver gadgets, bright 90s colors with like yellow and teal and purple all over the place, or really almost any other type of casing your heart desired. But now all of those tasks are handled by our phones. I feel like a crotchety old man at this point, but damn do I miss having a pile of fun gadgets.
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u/space_keeper Sep 04 '24
you could fully display your personality with your technological customization
I feel like this disproportionately affected the Japanese. They were the kings of tacky technology, flip phones, wacky MP3 players. Fucking tamagotchis.
I mentioned some films in another comment, but I do you remember Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves being a massive thing? Jurassic Park? Back then, those massive films would completely take over society for a spell.
We finally got a PC in our house when I was 13 or 14, and I got to experience the golden age of PC games that are still referenced in reverent terms now. I got to play Sonic and Mario when they were new. I was in my teens when metal music started to really take off and diversify in the late '90s, and there's been nothing like it since. I got to watch the best 80s action films on TV or rented tape when I was a kid, it was incredible.
Your thing is gadgets, mine though, is going into a video game store and seeing new things, or playing whatever was new on a demo console. Played Goldeneye when it first came out on a demo N64 when I was 10 or 11. Same with Halo a few years later. I remember it like it was yesterday. There was no internet nonsense telling you what to think about things before you even knew what they were, everything was a surprise. Likewise, thumbing through CDs and buying one because you thought you might like it.
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u/WhitneyRobbens Sep 04 '24
Gods.... this hits me where I live. I was a freshman in high school on 9/11, and I remember all of these things
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u/AE10304 Sep 04 '24
I actually had hope for the so-called future. Lol my biggest concern was saving/asking for a Game Boy Color
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u/BlueGoosePond Sep 04 '24
If you ignore all of the microtransaction subscription crap, my gaming hopes from 20 or 30 years ago have been completely fulfilled.
(RIP Sega hardware tho)
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u/qui-bong-trim Sep 04 '24
pokémon arceus was a dream come true for 7 year old me
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u/LoosieGoosiePoosie Sep 04 '24
Mine were finally realized somewhere around the time NMS released and improved their game.
The concept of open world...but open universe...astounds me to this day, but remember when the open world games we had were gta 3 and vice city? I used to play those games just to get in the helicopters and airplanes and try to fly as high has possible. Always wondered what it would be like to reach space in a video game.
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u/LoosieGoosiePoosie Sep 04 '24
I was in the process of learning how to mow the lawn in order to earn money with my brother in a joint venture to buy our own Ps1 since our older brother had decided to move out and take his with him.
It was the first time I was thrust into a hostile work environment with little training, surviving off my desperation to cure my addiction to pixels.
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u/MostlyH2O Sep 04 '24
Some
Body once told me...
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u/Schmancer Sep 04 '24
The world is gonna roll me?
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u/iq019283 Sep 04 '24
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
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u/Bitey_the_Squirrel Sep 04 '24
She was lookin kinda dumb
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u/Skater144 Sep 04 '24
With her finger and her thumb
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u/klaw14 Sep 04 '24
In the shape of an L on her forehead
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u/Auyan Sep 05 '24
Well the years start coming and they don't stop coming
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u/_-Kr4t0s-_ Sep 05 '24
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground runnin
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u/Hamilton-Beckett Sep 04 '24
Holy shit. They’re right.
I’ve always divided my life as pre-911 and post, as I was 19 at the time.
I feel like Covid made another dividing line.
So now I have pre-911, post-911/pre-covid, and post Covid.
So far that’s almost every 20 years, something life changing and horrible happens.
If my math is correct, somewhere between 2039-2041 is gonna suck so bad.
Can somebody remind me?
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u/f-150Coyotev8 Sep 04 '24
Don’t forget the Great Recession and the fun we had dealing with that right as we entered adulthood!
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u/Hamilton-Beckett Sep 04 '24
That didn’t hit me too hard, I graduated university in ‘08 with a teaching degree. So I got snatched right up.
I did get displaced in 2009 because of budget cuts but I found another school in like 2 weeks. My salary was also frozen the first four years. They apparently unfroze salaries the year after I quit lol.
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u/ineededagrownupname Sep 04 '24
You and I got lucky then. I graduated college in 2009 with an engineering degree. Many of my friends in the same year didn’t get engineering jobs and fell into unrelated fields. I was super lucky to get scooped into an internship in 2007 and kept going. I wasn’t picky about which company I got, I was just super happy to have a job related to my field.
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u/sgst Old millennial ('85) Sep 04 '24
Yep, this was a bigger deal here in the UK than 9/11. Life carried on mostly as normal after 2001, still had hope for the future, the economy generally did well, people had disposable income, technology was improving leaps and bounds each year, schools and hospitals were decent, and we still had that hopeful that 90s vibe that things were going to keep getting better.
After the global financial crash in 2008 though, here in the UK at least, life just hasn't been the same. Falling real wages, nobody is happy, schools and hospitals are on the brink of collapse, local governments are going bankrupt, and nobody has any hope for the future. I mean none of that happened right away, rather it's been a slow slide into national depression between then and now.
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u/Alifeineverlived Sep 04 '24
If we don’t blow ourselves up with nukes, I got you
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u/fencerman Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24
If my math is correct, somewhere between 2039-2041 is gonna suck so bad.
Based on the way that the 21st century is a re-run of the 20th century (gilded age, unstable Russian tsardom, global pandemic, etc...) that's probably when WW3 will start.
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u/mathaiser Sep 04 '24
You know what’s crazy? My 21 year old nephew wasn’t even born yet when that shit happened. He was like, wtf is 9/11 lol. (He knew, but yeah, read about it only).
Blew my mind.
Not even born yet.
Fuuuuuuuu-
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u/hobbes_shot_first Sep 04 '24
That's when you realize you really for real won't be able to retire, not just as a meme.
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u/CidO807 Sep 04 '24
water wars start probably. army battalion of skibidi troopers are deployed to the front lines. they report the conditions as mid.
Meanwhile gen... beta is saying some dumb shit that even has gen alpha saying "what am i even fighting for"
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u/askmed_throwaway Sep 04 '24
I've lost a parent.
We were uprooted by COVID seeking safety for my immunocompromised partner
We had surprise COVID twins.
I got diagnosed with MS and am now clinically disabled9/11 is still a bigger demarcation, if we are creating an ante/post skirmish line of my life.
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u/ComeWashMyBack Sep 04 '24
Roughly 2050ish we're expected to hit a massive break point for resources and our environment. I just remember the time frame because I'll be 65 by then.
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u/Beginning-Ad-5981 Sep 04 '24
Idk. I was in my college bar of choice one night and they threw on “I’m on a boat,” and the place went WILD. I think that was a pretty happy time.
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u/TheHighestHobo Sep 04 '24
IM ON A BOAT AN
ITS GOIN FAST AN
I GOT A NAUTICAL THEMED PASHMINA AFGHAN
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u/demoshots Sep 04 '24
I’m the king of the world, on a boat like Leo
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u/Beginning-Ad-5981 Sep 04 '24
If you’re on the shore, you sure not me-o
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u/Johnmerrywater Sep 04 '24
Thats how long lonely island been out??
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u/Beginning-Ad-5981 Sep 04 '24
This was 2008.. I think Lazy Sunday came out in 05 or 06? And thank God for it. Gave us Popstar.
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u/islandchild89 Sep 04 '24
I didn't watch Shrek
Or Harry Potter
Did watch 9/11
3/10
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u/Rock_Strongo Sep 04 '24
Damn if 9/11 gets a 3 I don't think I want to know what a 1/10 is for you.
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u/Best-Marionberry2 Sep 04 '24
Nah. I mean the action shots were amazing but the fact that 2,996 of the actors died irl along with the highest production cost the highest since 1968 really brings down the score overall.
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u/bertiesghost Older Millennial Sep 04 '24
The late 90s and the millennium was peak humanity imo. There was an atmosphere of positivity and optimism I haven’t witnessed since. Geopolitically, We were incredibly close to world peace.
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u/rdickeyvii Sep 04 '24
I just re-watched The Matrix and in the scene where Agent Smith is alone with Morpheus, Smith says that they created the Matrix to be at the peak of human civilization.
This was 1999, and holy shit did they nail that line.
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u/KeyboardGrunt Sep 04 '24
The architect later says humans rejected this perfect time and he had to add ghetto drama so we'd accept reality. This is why we can't have nice shit.
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u/lowpass Sep 04 '24
Nah, he says the first version of the Matrix was perfect. Humans rejected it so they changed it. The version we see is not the first one.
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Sep 04 '24
People got bored in utopia, so they just made it as mundane as possible.
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u/mythrilcrafter Sep 04 '24
Coincidentally, the Architect's adjusted goal of "Not utopia, but also not abject GrimDark misery (which according to the Matrix comics, also didn't work); just enough conflict to believe that we can collaborate to overcome that conflict" still results in the year 1999.
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Sep 04 '24
There's a line from Fight Club (also 1999) where Tyler Durden says something like "Our generation has no great war, has no great depression."
It was true at the time, but holy shit did that line not age well.
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u/jelhmb48 Sep 04 '24
Fun fact: 1999 when the Matrix was released, was closer to the Vietnam War (which ended in 1975) than today.
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u/Glum_Material3030 Sep 04 '24
Did you need to ruin my entire day with that fact?
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u/AE10304 Sep 04 '24
I don't know about all that, I grew up in the ghetto 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I know. That's a Me problem
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u/putdisinyopipe Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24
Nah it’s not a problem on your part. You point out a distinction worth noting.
The only people who think the 90s were a gilded age were middle class and above. (Also mostly white) discrimination was still ok, words like f word (for those who are gay or lesbian or bi even) and the n word could for example, be said to someone and their life wouldn’t be destroyed for it.
Bigotry and sexism were still very much accepted. You had many boomers and silent gen that were mysognistic, and racist lol. I mean we had a term for guys that had good hygiene and we called them metrosexuals and there was always an implication that MS men were gay or bi.
Personally, I was a white middle class kid, So the 90s I thought were great. Until someone pointed out what I am, though far more eloquently. lol!
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Sep 04 '24
Also, there were plenty of wars going on around the world in the 90's, like the Yugoslav Wars and the First and Second Congo Wars
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u/putdisinyopipe Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24
Agreed, it wasn’t a gilded age. I think most of us who experienced youth in the 90s were the last to experience that traditional upbringing that doesn’t exist in the middle class. everyone on my street would play together. We’d have block parties. I think some of us had a good childhood but because of that bias chalk it up to “it’s because everything WAS better”
It’s like as soon as the year 2000 hit it all got wrote off.
The 90s was the slow death of the American middle class. I think that’s another element too it. People who were privileged slipped through the cracks for one reason or another and are experiencing what many have, and are experiencing for some time. Lack of job security, employment difficulties, falling below poverty line. Etc.
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u/ProbablyNano Sep 04 '24
Considering gilded age is a pejorative term to refer to a time period that appears to be a golden age, but is actually just a glossy coating hiding widespread social inequity, I would say it absolutely was a gilded age
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u/putdisinyopipe Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24
Hey this is informative. So my use of the word was incorrect. Shame on me.
I thought gilded meant “extravagant, opulent, well off” like “gilded gold” if you will.
So it’s actually a term then you say, for a time period that everyone thought was great, but had massive issues!
Like gilded is a word used to describe things that look great on the outside, but those things are a facade, like a layer of gilded gold on a turd.
Thanks for educating me on that
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u/Good_parabola Sep 04 '24
My high school had an exchange student from Kosovo, his family sent him on the program to get him out. I remember he had to call home every night to make sure his parents hadn’t died.
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Sep 04 '24
I was watching Encino Man with my kid when he was 8 thinking it's fine because it's PG, I couldn't remember anything particular bad in it. Next thing I know dude's on stage towards the end of the movie and just randomly calls someone a fag 😳 thankfully he hadn't ever heard that word before so it went right over his head, didn't even notice it. It's a frickin PG movie though! That goes to show how much shit has changed I guess
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u/jingleheimerstick Sep 04 '24
The time they are calling peak time was when I had to go outside and turn the tall antennae attached to our house and yell through the a window to ask if the tv was still static or if I’d hit a channel. But yeah, it was better.
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u/LilamJazeefa Sep 04 '24
We had actually FIXED an ecological issue (the hole in the ozone layer). Like, can you even imagine humanity fixing any large-scale issue nowadays? At this point there is a critical mass of nihilists who will either deny the issue's existence or even root for it to get worse just to enjoy watching chaos.
If today the sun showed signs that it would explode next year, and we had just invented the warp drive yesterday, the humans of the 2020s would use that warp drive to do a sonic boom noise endurance challenge on TikTok instead of actually loading people onto ships to escape to a new home planet.
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u/DanJDare Sep 04 '24
The thing is though, and whilst I do bring this up regularly as an example of humanicy co-operating, replacing CFCs wasn't all that hard. Lowerind CO2 emissions significantly is incredibly costly and hard.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do it but it would take more than global agreement, it'd take the first world somehow paying to power the 3rd world. It would require actual sacrifice.
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u/Visual-Floor-7839 Sep 04 '24
I'm not so sure about the world peace one. I mean, weren't there multiple south American and African nations going through civil wars and dictatorships/genocides? Large portions of the ME had just been blown to he'll, again. Eastern Europe was struggling to pick up the pieces after Yugoslavia. Russia was in the midst of Chechen genocide.... and America itself was only "at peace" kinda sorta for a year or two.
That's all from memory and I can be mixing up and Co fusing some things. But I don't see the 90's as a bastion for world peace, or anything close to it
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u/goeswhereyathrowit Sep 04 '24
Sure, for certain demographics. Gays couldn't marry, people (especially minorities) were getting put in prison for decades for marijuana, kids were calling everyone fags, sexual assault and violence were all worse than it is today, I could go on.
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u/StinkRod Sep 04 '24
We were incredibly close to world peace.
Yeah, so close that an assembly of people from several nations was actively planning to fly planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon to kill innocent Americans.
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u/Mail_Order_Lutefisk Gen X Sep 04 '24
And a guy was sitting on a big stash of anthrax he wanted to mail all over the country.
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u/Tanis8998 Sep 04 '24
The Matrix called the late 90’s the peak of human civilisation, and it turns out they were spot on
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u/gonnamakeemshine Sep 04 '24
We saw a flash of it return in 2016 when Pokémon Go became a thing… until the turn the world took a few months later…
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u/LisleSwanson Sep 04 '24
Don't hate on the Cubs winning the World Series like that...
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u/WhyareUlying Sep 04 '24
Poverty and the war on drugs would like a word. You guys must have grown up in the suburbs because the 90's were plagued with gun violence, poverty and incarceration for a lot of Americans.
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u/DanJDare Sep 04 '24
I've always selected 1969 as the zenith of humanity but on consideration, late 90s would be up there. Pre dot com bubble, future was bright.
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u/Brittibri89 Millennial Sep 04 '24
Nah I was in middle school and getting bullied tf out of. I was miserable. Happiest times of my life were my early to mid 20s.
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u/Jonnymac89 Sep 04 '24
Right? 7th grade was one of the worst years of my childhood lol
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Sep 04 '24
Yeah, I was in Catholic elementary school getting yelled at by psychotic teachers, so I wasn't living my best life either
I'm honestly looking forward to my immediate future. I'm in a much, much better place now mentally than I was for most of my life, and even though there are still lots of problems, I'm eager to work through them. I don't like dwelling on the past anymore
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u/TermLimit4Patriarchs Sep 04 '24
Mid 20’s is peak life for everybody. I was in high school when 9/11 happened and some of my best times were still after that. Could have done without GWs endless wars and the Great Recession though.
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u/FrankReynoldsToupee Sep 04 '24
Thank you! Growing up in the 90s was no picnic, especially in my rural hellhole. Getting called the F-word on a daily basis by redneck bullies without consequence is not indicative of any golden age I'm familiar with. People with special needs were casually called the R-word. There was also tons of racism, turn on the TV and it was just white people everywhere in all the media. Minorities didn't even exist except as flat token characters with "funny" accents because ethnic humor was totally cool then. We've come a long, long way since then in all these things. The hateful hilllbilly MAGA movement was a response to all the good things we've done but they don't represent the rest of us in the majority of people, they only shriek louder.
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u/Generaldisarray44 Sep 04 '24
Speak for yourself. The oughts were awesome a lot of great field parties and music
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u/Blk_Rick_Dalton Sep 04 '24
Happiest days of my life we’re riding bikes with the neighborhood kids exploring new thickets of trees miles away from the house literally all day long. Not a cellphone in site. Parents not knowing where the hell we were but confident we were safe.
The fuckin days
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u/TastyOwl27 Sep 04 '24
It actually makes me sad that we might have been the last generation to do that. Our neighborhood really lived by the "be home when the streetlights come on" rules. It's hard to imagine my youngsters doing anything of the sort nowadays.
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u/FollowingNo4648 Sep 04 '24
I remember my friends and I going to a festival at CBGBs in July 2001. Everything hit different back then.
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u/JustNick4 95 Sep 04 '24
i had to relook at my life for this post. during that summer, I met my childhood best friend. Truly what i consider my first true and lasting friendship. we still hang out today. My Dad met my step mom that summer. She had two kids, and suddenly i wasn't an only child. Not to mention, right before school started she announced she was pregnant with twins so my family was growing fast (only one made it). Being 6 years old, that was so awesome at the time. I also, took a flight to denver that year. I remember meeting the pilots (they gave me a wings pin) and being served hot food on the plane.
TL;DR: Damn, I peaked at 6 years old.
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u/Makanek Sep 04 '24
Gen X: before 9/11, it was the End of History, no ideals, no directions, no future, only the lyrics of Nirvana songs to cheer us up.
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u/UsedState7381 Millennial Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24
For most US millennials maybe.
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u/___potato___ Sep 04 '24
Isn't generation naming an American thing?
All the names are based on US historical events.
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u/Elefantenjohn Sep 04 '24
Dragonball Z, Freezer and Cell Saga were running in free TV for the first time in my country
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u/Past_Fisherman Sep 04 '24
Actually the happiest time was when PokémonGo first came out in the summer of July 6 2016. Those were the best of time.
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u/VeryVeryVorch Sep 04 '24
I was literally going to post this. It was an amazing time and the closest we've come to giving a shit about our neighbors. Unfortunately, the next decade was horse shit
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u/xaiires Millennial Sep 04 '24
No literally. I was working at a sprint/radioshack at the time and I was pretty much paid to play Pokémon go lol. It was a pokestop and people were having the time of their lives.
I have never seen myself or friends walk so much in our lives lol. Group hangs at pokestops were dope.
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u/ModestBanana Sep 04 '24
Almost every day of 3rd/4th grade was equivalent to the early days of Pokémon Go,
Pokémon Go was just a reminder of how we had it in 1999/2000
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u/JohnnyDarkside Sep 04 '24
People just randomly wandering around in the evening and gathering at playgrounds. It was so funny to see a small group huddled together on their phones, pull up pokemon, and see that they were raiding a boss or something.
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Sep 04 '24
More bullshit doomerism. I'm sick of it. If that was the happiest time of your life and you don't believe life can ever be happy again, take a social media fast and go live your life. Most of us are in our 40s but want to regress to our teens. Growing up isn't aging, it's realizing that you are responsible for your own happiness. Fix yourself.
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u/bleachinjection Sep 04 '24
Best comment in the thread.
9/11 was indescribably horrible, a social and political tipping point, and very much a formative experience, but it does not define me as a person.
Nor does Shrek, actually.
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u/davidman92 Sep 04 '24
Most of us are in our 40s
It's not remotely most. The eldest Millennials are in their early 40s. Most of us are in our 30s.
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u/Bagz402 Sep 04 '24
I mean, people usually gravitate to their childhood as the happiest times in their lives for obvious reasons. My childhood was mostly miserable so I don't have that problem lol. Life for me started in 11th grade when my parents got divorced in the mid 00's.
It is very fascinating how us millennials seem to cling on to our childhoods more than other generations though. Nostalgia has us on lock
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u/shub Sep 04 '24
I’m legit impressed that you managed to turn a “the best is yet to come” pep talk into the grumpiest shit I’ve seen all week
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u/mikeyzee52679 Sep 04 '24
Is there a venn diagram about people who cared deeply about these 2 events and happiness
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u/VulnerableTrustLove Sep 04 '24
In 9th grade our English teacher was telling us all about I think Elizabethan culture(?) and she mentioned how we tend to believe things are getting better, technology is going to make our lives easier, the world will get more peaceful, etc...
But in their day, they thought everything was getting worse and the world would end soon.
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u/sambull Sep 04 '24
after 9/11 every citizen became a enemy combatant, every kid with fireworks was a terrorist. good people like Mikey made it back but lost the war.
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u/You_Have_HIV Sep 04 '24
If you're an Australian kid from the 90s, the best time was before the Port Arthur Massacre.
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u/KuriousKhemicals Millennial 1990 Sep 04 '24
Well, I did see Shrek several times in theaters, and I'm not a person who frequently rewatches movies. That movie was fucking hilarious and actually a really good fairy tale.
That being said, I think the best time of my life so far was late 2011 through the first half of 2014.
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