What's something that was once so common, you can't believe it's gone?

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

You know how, sometimes, technology evolves to the point of rendering everything on its path completely obsolete as soon as the next big thing hits?

What are some of those things that you grew up with and honestly believed would still be a part of your world decades into the future just for them to have quietly vanished since?

My pick for this sort of thing is landline telephones -- people used to plan entire rooms around the phone box because it was so monumentally important for the everyday management of the house that it needed to be centerpiece (and that only grew in importance once the internet became a thing and both dial-up and ADSL modems needed to be hooked up to them). But... They completely vanished in just a few years, mostly out of convenience.

If you had told my kid-self that no-one was going to own a landline telephone merely a few years into the future, I wouldn't have believed you at all. But here we are.

What about you? What's your pick for this sort of thing?

 

[Sunnyside]

Forums. I thought I'd always be able to find boards for nearly anything I needed. Nearly every community has migrated to Discord.

 

[qw90700]

For me the most bothersome ones:

- Common sense *ba dum tss* lol.

- Arcade places. I exclude certain countries but TBH sometimes people wanna enter nearest arcade places to just waste time!!!

- Decent libraries. I get we have Google at home now but public libraries became something else these days. Books are reduced and not really updated as they were back then and now they even sell condoms or something in it because... *ahem* you know lol.

"We are out of condoms? Damn, don't worry, babe. I'll run to the nearest public library ASAP and fetch one or two" lolol.

- Rural areas inside my city. I used to walk around jungles just to get to another part of my town but now I can hardly find grass. "Don't tell me to touch grass, I don't wanna go outside of my city and find a forest or something" lolol.

- Street food vendors. They were really cheap alternatives but they are illegal now unless they are approved within boundary of some places, and places that sells food are too expensive despite it is supposed to be something cheap. Instead I buy a sandwich or something in grocery shops for on the go eating anymore.

 

[MegaDrive1987]

For me...the Hi-Fi. Noone has them anymore, back in the 90s/00s they were in everyones living rooms. Now noone even sits down to actually listen to music properly anymore.

Here's mine, I do have the record player for it too but it recently died so I'm gonna have to replace it at some point.

 

[KaiserMk7]

Well, the obvious answer is Flash Player.

 

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

Forums. I thought I'd always be able to find boards for nearly anything I needed. Nearly every community has migrated to Discord.

Yeah... That one hurts.

 

[qw90700]

Well, the obvious answer is Flash Player.

Good thing we have Ruffle now so I can still play flash games on newsground lol. Flash 4 life!!! lolol

 

[KaiserMk7]

Forums. I thought I'd always be able to find boards for nearly anything I needed. Nearly every community has migrated to Discord.

It's even worse when it's a couple of decades worth of boards and they aren't even archived anymore.

 

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

It's even worse when it's a couple of decades worth of boards and they aren't even archived anymore.

And a lot of them were insanely preventable, too -- TapaTalk's take over of ZetaBoards destroyed thousands with little-to-no recourse.

And I still lament Penguins HQ's demise after its free hosting provider went down. That one was so insanely active that people who weren't even regulars had posts counts in the hundreds.

Not to mention large sites that were closed without archives of their huge and ancient boards, like Dark Starlings and Nexopia.

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

The Public Telephones that in my country are gradually ceasing to be operational or disappearing.

The Public Arcade Machines in supermarkets such as Super Xtra and Super 99 for example disappeared mainly due to lack of maintenance and that they were attractive to uniformed students, They get in the way of some space and the rise of emulation.

The Famous Street Vendors of Movie, Music, Video Game Records at a good price also disappeared due to the issue of piracy that was frowned upon by entertainment companies, the digital era such as streaming and official digital stores.

 

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

The Public Telephones that in my country are gradually ceasing to be operational or disappearing.

Haven't seen a payphone since my mall rat days.

 

[King_Fisher]

Forums. I thought I'd always be able to find boards for nearly anything I needed. Nearly every community has migrated to Discord.

same here. i honestly prefer forums over the discord format as its easier to check in and out while still feeling a part of a community. while discord in my experienced its like you missed a saga in a week and half your acquaintances left.

 

[Isegrim]

Creative board games for children in toy stores.

I don't mean the expensive speciality board games with complicated rules.

In my day, when I used to visit a toy store or toy section of a department store, you'd find amazing board games like Bermuda Triangle, Bonkers, Creature Castle, Charge it and even licensed ones like Star Wars: Escape from the Death Star, Pac-Man (and Ms. Pac-Man) and the World of Micronauts Board game where you'd assemble these 3-d cut cardboard cut outs and they'd be part of the game. Some like Mouse Trap and Splish Splash had this Rube Goldberg type mechanism that would bump off any player pieces standing on the wrong spot to suffer a penalty. When I was a kid, my family used to collect these board games, enjoying the creative cartoony art and have a blast. The rules weren't overly complicated nor too childish nor do these games took too long to play. And it's not just for kids, even our uncle joined in because they could be really fun.

There was this Milton Bradley board game based on Ralph Bakshi's version of Lord of the Rings that we played a lot of. We knew about Frodo and Gandalf long before Peter Jackson's movies and the board game was the most hilarious thing we ever played despite the title due to the various insidious ways you could screw up your opponent trying to get to Mt. Doom. Many memorable fights happened just because of that board game.

In the toy section, there's nothing new and really creative...now everything is just Monopoly, Cluedo or some classic game with a different skin. Or it's something original, it's too simple and doesn't hold a candle to the old games we used to play.

 

[Vardalis]

I think for me I always get that feeling when I go looking for something in physical stores that I feel should have them but probably haven't stocked them in years. Things like when I was trying to find a SCART adaptor a few years ago, or CD cases, or even a Micro-USB cable I struggled to find.

Also payphones. I've never used one in my life but it's sad to see them disappear. My town had a modern one but I've never seen it working, and I've got no idea why it's still getting supplied power with the screen that's always just displaying some BIOS error. I don't think I've ever seen it not like that.

 

[Miles]

In the toy section, there's nothing new and really creative...now everything is just Monopoly, Cluedo or some classic game with a different skin. Or it's something original, it's too simple and doesn't hold a candle to the old games we used to play.

There's so many different editions of Monopoly now that it's not even funny.

 

[bjork]

Both payphones and landlines still exist, but definitely not in the amount they used to.

The one that I think of that isn't fully gone but is on its way, is leaded gasoline. My first car ran on leaded gasoline, and even back then it was really tough to find a station that still had it.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 9:15 PM

For me...the Hi-Fi. Noone has them anymore, back in the 90s/00s they were in everyones living rooms. Now noone even sits down to actually listen to music properly anymore.

Here's mine, I do have the record player for it too but it recently died so I'm gonna have to replace it at some point.

Do you know what happened to the record player? If it's the belt, that's like a $20 fix in some cases.

 

[Jeff]

Arcade places with actual arcade games
Phone books
Video stores
Cereal with a prize inside
Vending machines with candy, chips, and soda that are now replaced with healthy snacks

 

[Bakuma1997]

Prizes in Cereal and "Get free prize if you find a ticket in the package" promotions

 

[DjQuick2008]

for me games on cassette tapes that what i started on commodore 64

 

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

Oh, I miss getting my TV Guide on the mail.

 

[DjQuick2008]

Oh, I miss getting my TV Guide on the mail.

i used to buy the tv guide just to find out what movies were on

 

[Miles]

Arcade places with actual arcade games

"Arcades" these days seem to just have ports of mobile games.

 

[DjQuick2008]

sky digital

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 10:51 PM

Prizes in Cereal and "Get free prize if you find a ticket in the package" promotions

used to love collecting stuff from kelloggs boxes

 

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

i used to buy the tv guide just to find out what movies were on

Mine was mailed by the cable provider with your bill.

First, it was a proper book.

Then a flyer.

And finally, a sheet.

Now you get nothing.

 

[DjQuick2008]

coca cola yo yos were bigger than pokemon at one stage