Dollar Tree being only a single dollar on everything.
I didn’t know Dollar Tree existed further back in the years like the 80s. But, I didn’t discover the store until like late 2000s. That store was a godsend for my then mostly broke ass. Sure the quality of products could’ve been better and the food selection could’ve been better, but they were there for me and others who’re strapped on budgets.
And it was a good 16 years while that lasted. It is a little annoying at times to shop there and know it is no different than Dollar General and Family Dollar. But it could’ve been worse.
Democracy.
Software/Apps costing a fixed, one-time amount rather than subscription models for everything
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Already there friend!
Yugoslavia. Party scene. Some relationships.
Pokémon Go. Those first few weeks and months were nothing like anyone could have imagined from a mobile game. People were outside and enjoying a game with other people. I remember seeing videos of people all running because a rare Pokemon had spawned somewhere and everyone was helping each other to get to it.
The game itself was a simple affair anyone and everyone could play with no paywalls or subscriptions. Now it’s just paywalled events, Pokemon locked behind those events and it’s just a slog to play now.
I’m glad I got to be a part of those early days.
I never played it, but it looked like a good time for people into Pokemon for sure. Unfortunately on the flip side, I know of it being a problem in some specific areas too. A friend in Seattle wasn’t getting any sleep for weeks because idiots were ruining it for everyone by running loudly at 1 to 3 am near his apartment. I hope that if any other big AR game goes live, they enforce quiet hours.
I remember my entire team going for a walk suddenly when someone realised there was an interesting Pokemon that had spawned nearby.
What killed it?
I wasn’t super into the hype but I messed around on it and enjoyed talking to people about it
I am guessing enshittified?
For me, way too much being put behind a paywall. And not just big events. I get a real world event like the Go Fests should be, I even was going to go to one but Covid stopped it. But it got to the point where it seemed every in game event started to have a paywalled part to it. They started putting Pokemon behind them too and community days started to have them too. Was just too much.
My personal opinion is it has only gotten better. Like there wasn’t trainer battles or anything back in the first days. I could go without the new dynamax thing they’re just put out, but you don’t have to involve yourself with it if you don’t want
Reminds me of geochaching. I don’t think the website charged, a GPS wasn’t already in everyone’s hands, and the stuff we hid was good stuff.
Now they have Premium if you want to do it, and it just isn’t the same.
Democracy
Physical media, physical buttons, watching sports without a subscription.
Digg, reddit
The chive
Halo 1 to halo reach
Uber and Lyft, by forcing cab services to get better while paying good.
My knees.
My back.
Thankfully that is still working. But you never know.
You have my empathy friend.
Inbox by Gmail
There was a brief moment when broadcast television networks just put their shit on the internet for free. Like you just had to go to their website, and then like the whole catalog of Scrubs or something was just there to watch.
I heard about that in the 2000s when they did that.
And that was a solution to the piracy ordeal they were fluffing about. But then they got rid of the shows being put online, just so they can bitch about piracy years later.
Hope
Having hope for the future. Believing it would be better than the present.
So much this. Please let politics be boring again.
Instead of trying to make idiocracy happen faster than previously believed to be possible.
I really miss having the delusion that MOST people were good, just more susceptible to media influence and bullshit.
Fuck, I really miss that. What a good response, thx!
There’s a reason “may you live in interesting times” is a curse.
Though I’m not sure the current times are really that interesting. More like terminally stupid.
Wow I hadn’t actually realised this had changed, but of course it has.
I remember watching “beyond 2000” as an 80s kid. A TV show about the inventions and stuff, what life would be like, it was so amazing.
Now we all know the future will just be more oppressive than it is now.
I remember Beyond 2000, it was great.
Reality was quite a disappointment after that, I must say.
Blockbuster and similar video rental stores. Shit was magical before streaming or even getting movies in the mail.
Hey you can recreate the experience by simply going to your local library, except most libraries have eliminated late fees and there’s of course no checkout fees either
Sounds like communism to me smh
It WAS magical compared to bring forced to watch/play all the stuff that was otherwise available to you, but your definitely spring some rose colored glasses here.
Yes, I also have great memories of walking the shelves searching for the Nintendo game we’d play this weekend while my parents picked out a movie or two, but I think you’ve forgotten the feeling of seeing that the one you REALLY wanted was out of stock, or rushing to head out the door in order to avoid a late fee, or forgetting about last week’s late fee and having to pay twice as much to rent this weeks entertainment.
It was an experience that no longer exists, but it was objectively inferior to what we have available now.
Inferior in convenience, superior in experience. (unless you’re a forgetful slob, but like… don’t be one?)
Blockbuster generates 20% of its revenue through late fees. My lifestyle does make a difference! By strategically failing I am proactively participating in a concerted effort to expand this nation’s GDP.
This is my contract with America!
It is arguably preying on this trait that made the pricing possibleAsode from that, you can’t honestly suggest to that just ‘not being that way’ is a valid option. Sure that can work to a small degree for specific individuals, but ‘just don’t be the way you are’ to solve some specific challenge, likely at the detriment to many other traits you may not want to break, is thoughtless and ignorant advice.
Yeah, every Friday, we’d go to Blockbusters and peruse the aisles until we found a video. It was a nice tradition.
🤣 What?? Blockbuster was shit, renting was shit. From unavailability, to fees, to rewinding, the whole industry deserved to die.
I can’t believe people remember that shit fondly…
I knew a family growing up who’d check out movies from the library instead of Blockbuster usually, and as DVDs became more relevant they kept going for VHS tapes because they were less likely to be scratched to unreadability. I can’t remember how much my family went for VHS tapes vs DVDs but it may have been purely based on availability. I do however remember my dad had a strong preference for widescreen despite our setup letterboxing widescreen films (like most home theaters of the day) and quite a few times being sent back to swap the full screen release I grabbed for the wide screen one
For any young’uns reading, in the early 2000s with broadcasters shifting from transmitting a 4:3 image to a 16:9 image, home media soon followed but since many people didn’t yet have hardware supporting widescreen, fullscreen releases typically had the edges chopped off to fit in a 4:3 aspect ratio while widescreen saw less cropping compared to the version seen in theatres, but then for older home theatre hardware that only knows 4:3 video formats it would have black bars on the top and bottom whereas fullscreen would of course fill a 4:3 screen
