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Technological advancements can be great. I honestly don’t know what I would do without my air fryer or my smartphone, and I’m grateful every day that I don’t have to fiddle with paper maps when traveling. But the days before we had constant access to the internet weren’t all bad, and some Reddit users have recently been reminiscing on their favorite aspects of “way back when.”

Below, you’ll find a list of things that Gen Z and all of the generations to come will never get to experience, from answering the phone without knowing who’s on the other line to being unable to contact Mom and Dad while playing at the park. Enjoy scrolling through this nostalgic list, and be sure to upvote the experiences you wish your grandchildren could have!

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#1

here was a high standard in journalism. Striving for facts and objectivity was required. We had a limited number of channels on the TV, so all three broadcast news programs chose and reported pretty much the same news stories with identical, essential facts. Opinions of political parties over bills and whatnot were reported, not critiqued.

i_hate_this_part_85:
Back then, our journalists were actually held to a standard and would get fired if they knowingly lied. Yes, there were more gatekeepers, but there was much less divisiveness built into every damn thing.

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Final score:
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#2

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience The freedom that comes with your parents not really knowing where you were. We just rode our bikes, all with out being tethered to a cell phone.

listenyall replied:
That whole 'delaying the inevitable' period of time when you knew that your parents were probably already mad because you were late, but you stayed out anyway because they couldn't yell at you until you were home!

Montana-Mike-RPCV , Alan Kotok Report

Final score:
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Kristiina
Kristiina
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We ran wild and free when I was young. Had lot of friends and learned to cope with life, social skills, and coping mechanisms. It wasn't always safe, we did some really stupid stuff but we made it.

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#3

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Albums and perusing record stores. The posters, album artwork and the incense smell.

samarijackfan , Mick Haupt Report

Final score:
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Erin S
Erin S
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Record stores are still here, and it's young people buying a lot of the vinyl.

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#4

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Music festivals where everyone is just sitting and enjoying the vibes. No recording, no filming. Why can't we do this again? Prohibit devices at live venues.

carolathome , Yan Krukau Report

Final score:
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#5

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Being able to buy tickets at concert venues without having to worry about associated fees and s**tty broker companies. KonaKathie replied: We met so many people while waiting in line to buy tickets. Oftentimes, they became good friends.

threerottenbranches , hildgrim Report

Final score:
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Mell
Mell
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Metallica and Riverdance... Would love to hear the story behind that! :)

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#6

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Walking a loved one all the way to the departure gate and watching their plane take off.

chasonreddit replied:
And meeting them at the gate when they returned.

bkdunbar , Skitterphoto Report

Final score:
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Uncanny
Uncanny
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Can still do it here in Oz. Just have to go thru the detector. 🤷‍♀️

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#7

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Simple, cheap cars that any ham handed shade tree mechanic could fix.

DistinctRole1877 , Riley Report

Final score:
186points
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Hawkmoon
Hawkmoon
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My father-in-law kept an old car like this for more than 20 years (VW Golf, early models). Over 300,000 km, almost no longer a single original part.

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#8

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Wing windows.

Apprehensive-Cry-376 , artistmac Report

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Matthew Thompson
Matthew Thompson
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Hand in hand with the flat-topped window glass that would hold the tray when you got your meal 'for here' at Sonic.

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#9

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Analog controls in cars and appliances — touch screen and digital displays are far less functional than knobs and springs and stuff —

Affectionate_Sky658 , Eric Friedebach Report

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Solidhog
Solidhog
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And good design inside cars. Hate those that look like someone has just used double sided tape to stick a tablet to the dash.

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#10

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Waiting for the mail to see if you had a card or letter

Zorro6855 , Suzy Hazelwood Report

Final score:
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troufaki13
troufaki13
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I used to have pen pals from all over the world and I loved it! 🥰 It's a shame we didn't stay in touch though... 😥

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#11

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience The communal experience of television or radio entertainment. Growing up in the 70s and 80s we didn’t have cable. We had like 4 TV stations. Everyone was pretty much watching the same thing in the evenings and folks would discuss the shows at school or work the next day. Same with radio - as teens, we all tried to catch Rick Dees or Kasey Kasem on the weekend so we knew what was cool and new.

i_hate_this_part_85 , Mike Spasoff Report

Final score:
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Elizabeth Elliot
Elizabeth Elliot
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It drew the country together; everyone had the same cultural touchstones!

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#12

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Phone booths. The feeling of privacy while making a call was unique to the time - being able to step out of the noisy world for a moment and still see it in motion, living, pulsating. The quiet desperation of taking notes on scraps of paper, or worse, on a page of a phone book, then ripping that page out to keep the note. 

Desertbro , Jisun Han Report

Final score:
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Elizabeth Elliot
Elizabeth Elliot
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The disappointment of hearing your only coin go 'Thunk!' into the reject tray...

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#13

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Road maps. The person in the passenger seat would tell the driver where to go, etc. There was almost always a stop at a gas station for directions on long trips thru unfamiliar areas. Great times, always an adventure!

Yankee_in_Madrid , Sergey Tarasov Report

Final score:
148points
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#14

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Slamming the phone receiver down as hard as you can when you're mad and hanging up on someone.

Party lines on the telephone. Literally sharing a phone line with someone else and being able to listen in on their phone conversations. It was also annoying when the 'other party' was using the line and you needed to make a call.

Being gone all day and no one could reach you.

moviesandcats , Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu Report

Final score:
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Lyone Fein
Lyone Fein
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Being unreachable is such a luxury. Who has alone time anymore?

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#15

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Encyclopedias and other reference books - not many left now except ones on subjects students might need. There used to be books for everything, and you'd always end up learning about more things than you opened the book to find.

Kobbett , Pixabay Report

Final score:
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Mycroft1967
Mycroft1967
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My google as a kid was the reference section and a card catalog. It was all there- you just had to find it.

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#16

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience They will never know the anticipation of waking up, seeing snow on the ground, turning on the radio and waiting for the announcer to say if your school will be closed or not. He'd have a list and be reading it and you'd wait for him to get to your school... almost there... here it comes... and then YESS!!!!!!!

My dad actually worked as a DJ at a radio station which did the school closings. They had a list of passwords given to each school, so that when the school called the radio station, they could verify it was not a prank. The passwords were literal words, like "daisy" or some such.

Bidi_Baba , Jess Zoerb Report

Final score:
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Downunderdude
Downunderdude
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Looxury. In my day, even if t'were 20 foot of snow, we still had to walk 25 miles to school. And we didn't have shoes cos our parents were poor. Kids of today...

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#17

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Sitting at a red light jamming to a good song on the radio and looking over to notice the neighboring driver is jamming to the same song, so you both start an impromptu jam session until the light turns green.

BackItUpWithLinks , Daniel Hansen Report

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scag$y
scag$y
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I came close to a similar vibe this summer. It was hot, I was stuck in city traffic and a guy in a convertible came alongside me from the opposite direction. A dance track had just finished on his (loud) system and so I asked him, 'Have you got any classic rock mate?' and he said, 'No.'. Wild.

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#18

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Going to a cell phone free concert

pbrooks19 replied:
No cellphones at theme parks, or any place of interest, really. So many people nowadays just shoot self-absorbed videos or just get in the way and distract everyone by being annoying with them.

DamnGoodMarmalade , Johannes Havn Report

Final score:
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James016
James016
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I went to a gig back in June and while there were people using cell phones, myself included, it was to take a few pics of the band onstage, then everyone was moshing or head banging.

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#19

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience The satisfaction of flipping open a newspaper and bending it just so, so that it would stay open in front of you while you held it, crinkling slightly (and turning your fingers black.) I didn't realize I missed this until recently when I needed to use some newspaper at work and there was a stack of them, and I flicked open a double-page expertly despite not having done it for...decades?

KAKrisko , Gül Işık Report

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#20

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience This is actually from the late 90/early 2000s, but I still really, really miss it:

cell phone manufacturers competing over who could have the SMALLEST cell phone. It was REALLY NICE to have a phone you could actually put into your pocket!

ReactsWithWords , José Miguel S Report

Final score:
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Malfar
Malfar
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Don't care about the "smallest" part, but man there were so many wildly different phone designs!

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#21

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Typewriters. Carbon paper. Mimeograph machines.

anon , Min An Report

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#22

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Stereos weighed a lot back in the day, for sure. But they sounded fantastic. People today think earbuds are high-fidelity sound.

newleaf9110 , Andrea Piacquadio Report

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ƒιѕн
ƒιѕн
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I had my own boom box growing up. Jammed out to alot of Van Halen on it.

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#23

The newer generation will never know the feeling of slamming a phone down when someone pissed you off on a call, then slamming it two or three more times for good measure. Hitting a button on a touchscreen to hang up on someone's stupidity just doesn't give the same satisfaction.

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SirWriteALot
SirWriteALot
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They just whack the phone against a wall or into the lake or something.

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#24

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience I bought a homemade ice-cream maker -- the old kind with a cedar bucket that leaks salt water over the porch, and a hand crank. I'd been telling my kids how much better it was, so they told me to just get one. Lo-and-behold, found one on an auction site. We pull it out a couple times a summer, and the ice cream IS as good as I remembered from childhood.

burning_spear_rtp , Alex Shultz Report

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ƒιѕн
ƒιѕн
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The absolute BEST ice cream was made in those. Remember dad sitting on the porch steps cranking away and adding more ice and rock salt.

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#25

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Taking most of Sunday to read the Sunday paper with the big crossword puzzle. Having to look up clues in the encyclopedia or dictionary. Reading all the sale inserts. Now I get the paper in an iPad don’t work the puzzles and no Sunday inserts.

angryoldbag , Bannon Morrissy Report

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KittyGaming
KittyGaming
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

When i was little and we would get the newspaper i would take the comics away as soon as i could and spend all of Sunday morning reading the comics

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#26

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience I kinda miss the 80’s - early 90’s computer era. It was fun to try and figure stuff out without having the internet to help you. Plus people really figured out how to squeeze some fun games out of those computers. Trading games with your friends was fun.

diabooklady:

I miss the early internet in the mid-1990s, when there weren't all these ads!

Frank_chevelle , Jeramey Jannene Report

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Solidhog
Solidhog
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I miss the early WWW when websites used the Internet for what it was originally designed for. Sharing information. Instead of trying to be over technical, artistic and hard to navigate like now, they were simple, displayed information clearly and finding contact details was not the equivalent of solving the da vinci code.

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#27

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Sitting alone in your room sobbing over some guy when you are 16, moving that needle to play the same sad song over and over again on your record player while your Bonne Bell black eyeliner and Yardley of London white lipstick melts down your face, until your father screams at you to “come downstairs and eat dinner for Chrissake and stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!”

MissHibernia , cottonbro studio Report

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#28

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience No caller ID that allowed me and my punk friends to do some amazing telephone pranks.

pakepake , Jordan Whitfield Report

Final score:
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Marco Richter
Marco Richter
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I recieved a prank call once, from a girl in my class telling me how much she loves me and if we should date. I knew it was a prank call so I handeled it respectively... Worst part was, I really had a crush on that girl :(

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#29

Using your kids as the tv tuner and remote.

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#30

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Cleaning the carburetor and adjusting the points on a truck engine with an engine compartment big enough you could stand inside it.

Smelling mimeographs.

Getting that distant FM radio station tuned in *just right*.

Checking your answering machine when you got home.

Folding up a manual convertible top in the rain. (or leaving it at home and driving in the rain getting stared at by all the other cars thinking you were the idiot that you were)

The cha-chunk sound an 8-track made in the middle of a long song.

Collecting points for the Radio Shack Battery Club.

(maybe not totally obsolete, but not done) Drinking water out of any random neighbor's hose in the summer.

Making Christmas wreaths out of folded punch cards and spray painting them gold.

Souping up your bicycle with baseball cards attached to the wheels with clothespins.

Shoot, to remember any more I would need a bong hit. Oh! Home made Bongs. Cleaning pot on record covers.

chasonreddit , dave_7 Report

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Robert T
Robert T
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I still have a carburettor on my classic. Have to take it off, clean it and change all the gaskets periodicallys. Fascinating piece of technology - very few moving parts but for the throttle butterflies and on mine, a mechanical pump on the bottom. Whole thing works by air pressure alone.

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#31

It's a weird one but I miss not being able to hear songs or knowing what they are. Any song you want now is a click away, but it used to take sometimes decades to find a track or even how to start to look for it.

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Tucker Cahooter
Tucker Cahooter
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

So true. There was a song that stuck in my head literally for over 40 years having only heard it once on radio that I never knew what it was called but now thanks to Youtube I can now identify (it was "Gangsters" by The Specials)

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#32

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Never knowing who was calling until you picked up the phone. Back in 60s and 70s, there weren't even answering machines, so if you didn't pick up, no idea who called.

And on the other side of that coin, when you called somebody and they didn't answer, you know it's not because they didn't want to task to you. It's because they weren't available.

DjDozzee , Reno Laithienne Report

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Trillian
Trillian
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And you ... actually MISS that? Hell no. If I don't know your number, no way am I picking up.

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#33

Hitchhiking to out door concerts back in the 70's.Freedom. When we had to get somewhere- we would hitchhike. Violence made it obsolete.

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Sonja
Sonja
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The violence was much higher back then, but news traveled slowly and people just didn't know

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#34

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience Notes left on the kitchen table.

CoolAbdul , Ketut Subiyanto Report

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#35

35 Older People Reminisce About The Moments They Miss That Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience I miss the friendly arguments that we used to have about who was the better ballplayer. Nowadays you can look up statistics immediately, but in the 70's and 80's it was your word again your buddies as to who was better.

myshirtisonfireagain , Josh Hemsley Report

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Solidhog
Solidhog
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Radio stations and song charts with real diversity. Not just filled with generic generated cloned songs. Go back to the 70's and 80's and the chart was filled with pop, ska, reggae, rock, folk and metal.

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