Spotify recently gave me Taylor Swift's song "Shake It Off" in the "Ten Years Ago" selection. I even paused it and couldn’t realize it for several minutes. Wait, what is it - a decade ago? It was literally yesterday... well, okay, the day before yesterday - and it turns out that ten years have passed since then?
Yes, that's right, time is inevitable as Thanos (hell, in 2014 we didn't even realize how dangerous he actually was!), and in the first half of the last decade there were a lot of incredibly cool and simply convenient things that were considered a total must-have, but now are gone with the wind. So here's another nostalgic collection made for you by Bored Panda based on this viral thread in the AskReddit community!
More info: Reddit
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Good free apps/ apps that you only had to pay once for.
"PLAY FOR FREE NOW! Oh to access that, pay $500 annually or $100 a month."
So, it's 2014, "Shake It Off" is on every iPod around the world, and Travis Kelce has yet to catch his first touchdown in the Chiefs jersey. Barack Obama is in the White House, LeBron James has not yet returned to Cleveland, and Tom Brady has only three championship rings. The US box office is dominated by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen, with Pharrell Williams occupying both the top of the charts and the Grammy stage.
Instagram has just moved from the “cool service for photographers” category to the “Wow, I can take a shot of my food and share it with my buds!” category, and the hipster subculture is at the peak of its popularity. The PlayStation 4 has just been released, and the most coveted smartphone on the planet is the iPhone 6. What can I say - a screen diagonal of 5.5 inches is considered simply indecently large! Yes, as good old Frank Sinatra once sang, “it was a very good year!”
Affordable houses. 2012 was the bottom. Unattainable for many first time buyers now.
An Ad-less internet. Every where I go it’s just ads. I’m ducking sick of corporations trying to get me to “buy their products”. YouTube now has up to 3 unskippable 15 second ads or 2 30 second unskippable ads. It’s disgusting.
Video Games without cosmetic microtransactions, battle passes, loot boxes, and other predatory monetization models.
Ah yes, back when cosmetic horse armor DLC for Oblivion was widely derided for being pointless and needlessly expensive. Now people defend that sort of DLC as being a good deal.
On the other hand, were things really so much better in 2014 that it looks like a genuine “Golden Age” compared to our time? Yes, there was no such political tension in the whole world, the economy was really way healthier than today, and the houses were really affordable for many of us. And there was no TikTok. Is this enough to make you nostalgic for the times of ten years ago?
Common sense appears to be on the verge of extinction these days.
As it always has seemed to every older generation ever. People are just as dumb as ever, we just notice it more as we get older.
Netflix streaming that had everything in one f*****g goddam place.
Single-topic blogs.
Remember those? Regretsy, Stuff White People Like, Cake Wrecks, People of Walmart, FML, Look At This F*****g Hipster, S**t My Dad Says, Awkward Family Photos, etc. Those things were everywhere from about 2007-2013, and then just sort of went away, though some live on, in a way, as subreddits now.
Stuff on my Cat! I have a vague memory that Regretsy, which was hilarious, was pushed into a position where the admins believed that if they didn't stop they were likely to be sued (or similar) by Etsy. They were agitators for trying to get Etsy to delist bulk resellers, which wasn't looked on with friendly eyes (and didn't work).
"In fact, every historical era, no matter how bad it may seem to the people living in it, also has its merits. And it’s human nature to be nostalgic for the 'good old days,'" says Valery Bolgan, a historian and editor-in-chief of the Intent news agency from Ukraine, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment here. “Our memory often retains only good things about past days, and the further they are from the present, the more they resemble a 'golden age'.”
“Those of us who lived through the 1980s, for example, often look back on them as a genuine era of prosperity, when in fact there were plenty of bad moments as well. Likewise, the middle of the last decade is just another year. With its advantages and disadvantages," Valery summarizes.
Hesitancy towards online shopping, and/or general preference to travel to the store to buy an item.
I remember thinking, "Who wants to buy clothes online. You need to try it on and feel it first." Then again, I also couldn't understand why anyone would want to carry a phone in their pocket and be reachable at all times. I do catch up with the trends eventually, but I often hold on too tightly to the things that we're losing.
“We're nostalgic not because the past was better than now, but because memory gives us mostly good memories. And also because, for example, ten years ago, many of us were younger, more beautiful, stronger, and had better health. And we, accordingly, transfer our own perception of the era onto the era itself," Valery Bolgan says.
“However, in the first half of the '10s there were a lot of really interesting things and phenomena that deserve some nostalgia. On the other hand, the very mechanism of our perception of information has changed significantly over these ten years. Just try watching some viral videos on YouTube from 2014. I'll bet a lot of you will find them damn long and boring," Valery states. "So every year is truly wonderful in its own right."
Leaving the house for a night out with a digital camera, mp3 player and a phone. Sometimes a whole ihome depending on where you’re going.
I actually dug my digital camera out last week to do a photoshoot. When I turned it on, the date had defaulted to 2008! I still need to find the card reader to examine the pictures. I also shot a load of pictures on my phone, and they are probably better than the camera took. The biggest difference though is in the screen resolution - the phone makes it soooo much easier to review what you have shot. Photo is going into a magazine as part of an advert, so I can't wait to see how it comes out.
People not trying everything in their power to get internet clout. Now it’s just a slog of people “trying to go viral”.
Either way, 2014 was a cool year. At least for me - because I became a dad for the first time that year. I think you all also have at least one reason to be nostalgic, so please get comfortable, turn on Pharrell Williams, Imagine Dragons or Iggy Azalea - and go ahead, scroll this list to the very end! And never miss a chance to share your own thoughts on the topic in the comments below!
My youth.
Hell, my middle age. As Oliver Wendall Holmes said when spotting a pretty young lady "Oh, to be seventy again!"
The Wii
I love the console don't get me wrong but I nearly know anyone that uses it as well as
Mii's.
Apparently therapy, this thread is depressing.
Who needs therapy when I can have a social media influencer tell me exactly why its everyone else's fault?
BlackBerry phones.
User repairable Apple products.
Not just Apple, all electronics need to be repairable. Planned obsolescence is killing the world economy.
Windows Phone. As an early adopter I was forever left behind by the superior apps that were on android and IOS despite liking the phone itself. I hoped it would catch up but never did :(.
Tivo.
TiVo and DVRs are great, but I *truly* miss removable media. What good is a DVR if I can't get the recording *OUT OF THE BOX* and take it someplace else? (Yeah, I know - ever since the Sony court ruling declaring home video recording legal, the entertainment industry has vowed they would find a way to kill it and stuff *that* genie back in the bottle.)
Kanye’s career.
I disagree. Unfortunately, Ye's career is far from over. Please stop supporting this crazyass tool.
Almost ten years ago, I found a neat series on Netflix. It was called Monster High, and then it left Netflix. Haven’t been able to find it since, lol. Any other monster high things I see on line don’t look quite like the one I watched. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Did a quick search, monster high is apparently on fuboTV, Philo, and Hulu ( might just be in the USA since that's where I'm searching from). Also there are illegal streaming sites, I frequently use putlocker.pe, make sure you've got a really good ad blocker though.
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Almost ten years ago, I found a neat series on Netflix. It was called Monster High, and then it left Netflix. Haven’t been able to find it since, lol. Any other monster high things I see on line don’t look quite like the one I watched. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Did a quick search, monster high is apparently on fuboTV, Philo, and Hulu ( might just be in the USA since that's where I'm searching from). Also there are illegal streaming sites, I frequently use putlocker.pe, make sure you've got a really good ad blocker though.
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