Look, it’s not that the ’90s were better or anything, it’s just that they were different. Anyone who grew up in a world with Wi-Fi and group chats completely missed out on some rather bizarre daily routines that we just accepted as normal. Whether it was pressing “record” at just the right moment to listen to music or having to watch a TV show at a specific time because otherwise, you missed it, Gen Z doesn’t realize how good they have it. Here are 19 things Gen Z will never understand about the ’90s. At least, not without questioning if people actually did that.
The TV Guide Channel Scroll
In the ’90s, if you had no clue what was on TV, you had to suffer through a slow, never-ending scroll that listed every channel. Just looking away for two seconds meant that you missed the information, so now you had to wait. And wait. And wait. Sometimes, the guide would freeze or glitch, and you’d have to wait for the whole lineup to cycle again. Worst of all, there was no way to search or pause, so you had to just pray your favorite show hadn’t started already.
Recording Songs Off the Radio
Your timing had to be perfect to record a song on the radio, as you had to press the button right when your jam started playing without the DJ talking over it. And yeah, we called it a “mix tape” and gave them out to people we really liked. We had to guess when the next song would play, and sometimes you’d catch the tail end of an ad or someone giving the weather forecast, but that was part of the charm.
AOL Free Trial CDs
AOL free trial CDs were practically everywhere, inside your mailbox and stuck to a pizza box. Each one promised “700 free hours!” like we weren’t already drowning in unused AOL trials, and nobody asked for them, nor did anybody know how AOL made money. But we all had a junk drawer full of ’em, with each CD having different colors and art, but the promise was always the same. We’d sometimes use a new email address just to activate another free trial.
Printing Out MapQuest Directions
You’d read “Left on 6th Street, right on Main Avenue” on your MapQuest directions before reading you were on page three of six, and now you had to get the right page. Even during a trip across town, you’d hope you didn’t make a wrong turn, because that meant pulling into a gas station and asking a stranger for help. You were all out of luck if it rained and your printouts got wet, or if your printer ran out of ink. If that happened, you’d drive with guesswork and hope.
Dial-Up Internet Drama
Kids today have never heard the screech of a modem trying to connect, and that noise is practically burned into our memory. It was even worse when someone picked up the phone mid-download because it meant you were now offline, mid-chat, or mid-email. It took several minutes to load just one image. Believe us, we remember.
Renting Consoles From Blockbuster
Your parents wouldn’t buy you a PlayStation, but if you were lucky and begged hard enough, you could rent one in this huge, padded suitcase from Blockbuster. It gave you a weekend of freedom, as long as you had the right cables and perhaps a memory card. The day you had to return it felt like the end of something so great. You just hoped you didn’t forget any pieces, or you’d get charged.
The Struggle of Clear Backpack Pockets
Clear backpacks were supposed to make us all safer, but all they really did was expose your snack stash and crumpled algebra homework to the whole world. Once those plastic seams split, and they always did, your stuff just started falling out. These backpacks would get foggy over time and scratched up, although trying to clean one was completely useless. That plastic just stayed grimy no matter what.
Cracking Open a CD Case
The CDs we bought from the store were always shrink-wrapped much too tightly, and that meant we’d sit there, peeling off that clingy sticker strip at the top with our fingernail, just to get inside. That sticker alone probably added five minutes to the entire experience of listening to a CD. Sometimes, the case cracked in the process, and other times, the booklet inside would be all crooked. But we didn’t care. We were just excited to finally play that first track.
Waiting For Your Tamagotchi to Die
No one actually wanted their Tamagotchi to die, but at the same time, we secretly wished it would happen because they beeped constantly in class and during dinner. Then, the guilt you felt when it passed away would eat you up. That is, until you’d reset it like nothing happened and start raising a new one because the cycle never ended, and we’d occasionally have two or three going at once.
Watching a Music Video Premiere on TV
When MTV said 4:30 p.m., you had to be in front of the TV by 4:28 because there was no rewind or replay. There wasn’t even a YouTube link later. You either saw the new Britney video live, or people made fun of you at school for not seeing her incredible dance moves. Everyone was watching at the same time, and people called their friends to scream about it afterward. It was a real moment.
Changing TV Channels By Hand
We had this thing called “the knob” on the TV and you had to get up off the couch to physically turn it to change channels, which felt a bit like turning a safe. And if the knob broke? Let’s just hope you were good with pliers, because that was your new remote. We’d occasionally just leave the TV on one channel to avoid the hassle, and you could forget all about volume control. That was a whole separate trip.
Messing With Rabbit Ear Antennas
Speaking of the TV, whenever it became fuzzy, that was our cue to become a human satellite dish by grabbing the antenna and holding it just right. Wait. Whatever you do, don’t move. Your sibling was watching the show, and your body was now part of the signal system. Some people used foil or coat hangers to improve the signal, and when it worked, you just stood there, frozen, like a statue.
Disposable Cameras With No Do-Overs
Snap first, regret later was the motto because cameras didn’t have instant previews or deleting. You’d take a group photo, and maybe everyone looked okay, since you wouldn’t know until you picked up the film from Walgreens. You had to wait days to get them developed, and sometimes the whole roll came back dark, while other times, your thumb covered the entire frame. It was as annoying as it sounds.
Winding Back VHS Tapes
There was nothing like getting comfortable for movie night, only to realize the last person didn’t rewind the tape, even though the rental stores had stickers that said “Be Kind, Rewind.” So now, you had to be the one to do it, instead of enjoying movie night properly. The fanciest of us would have a separate rewinder shaped like a sports car, which everyone else was jealous of.
Snack Branding That Changed Forever
There’s nothing more ’90s than purple ketchup and blue Pepsi, as well as cereal with pop rocks in it. Companies went wild in this decade and introduced all kinds of wacky flavors, as well as labels like “organic,” which nobody really understood back then. You just ate what had the most neon on the label and hoped for the best. Lunchboxes were full of things that crunched and stained your fingers, yet parents didn’t even blink.
Roller Rink Birthday Parties
The smell of a roller rink is something we’ll never forget, as it was half sweat and half hot dogs. Every ’90s kid knew that smell, as well as the feeling of the sticky floor and the sight of the carpet with shapes that hurt to stare at. You left every party with bruised knees and 20 plastic spider rings, but still, those parties were everything. The pizza was cold, the soda was flat, and nobody cared.
Setting a VCR to Record
You couldn’t simply “press record” to get your VCR set up. Oh no. Instead, you had to figure out the TV input and program the right channel, then time it down to the minute. A VCR blinking “12:00” was one of the worst sights because it meant that you weren’t recording anything except static. You also had to pray that nobody turned the TV off while it was recording because that would ruin the whole thing.
Chain Emails With Bad Luck Threats
“Forward this to 10 friends or your crush will hate you forever” was a completely normal thing to read after school. Some emails said your grandma’s ghost would visit you, and others promised good fortune to those who spread the emails. Did we forward them? Of course we did, because we didn’t want to take a chance on the chain email’s glittery fonts and blinking text. You always knew who didn’t forward it.
Buying Ringtones from the Back of a Magazine
Whenever you wanted your phone to play something cool when it rang, you didn’t open an app, but rather, you flipped to the ad pages in a teen magazine. Then, you’d pick a song code and text it to some weird number to receive a monotone version of a popular song that barely sounded right. Each one cost around $1.99 plus some hidden fee, but you kept trying because hearing a bad version of “Genie in a Bottle” when someone called was worth it.
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