Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

What’s one word to prove you lived trough the 90’s?

454 comments

Waaazzzaaaap
- That ad campaign started in 99, its really more of a 2000’s thing.
  
  Ya, but it proves I lived through the 90's 😆
  
  The 90s were from 1995 to 2005. That's just my opinion. I know it sounds dumb. Many things from 1990 to 1994 feel like the 80's.
- Outside of America, this is interpreted as a reference to Scary Movie instead of the budweiser ad.
  
  As a European, that’s indeed how I interpreted this.
- Hahaha that’s the first thing that popped in my mind! 😂
- Here in the Netherlands I never heard of it!
  
  Here you go!
  
  Watskeburt?

Winamp.

Y2K.
- I survived idiocy of managers asking for Y2K compliant padlocks. As in, physical padlocks.
  
  Hope you charged them double.

Encarta
- I remember this from the school library computers. That and even back then the school had some kind of broadband, it blew my mind that to get online all we had to do was open IE. I was used to that part but always had whatever dial up service we had at the time to open up and connect first. Just clicking IE and going was crazy to me.
- I remember trying to play Mind Maze and knowing absolutely nothing.
- I loved the video it has about nuclear fission reactions.

Pogs
- Remember Alf? He's back! In pog form!
- Came here to say this! My collection is MIA and it still makes me sad thinking about it.
  
  Your parents threw it away
- Hey can I come over and slam ur pogs?

Netscape
- Linux and Mac users can hold on to a little piece of that history with the wonderful xscreensaver suite (its author, jwz, was a Netscape dude).
  
  Even better just use Firefox it descended from Netscape Navigator.
  
  Add to that, flying toasters
  
  Jwz! He was like nerd Jesus to us 90s computer geeks

Tamagotchi
- Just bought my first Tamagatchi in 2023 lol
- Had the yellow one and a game boy one.
  And a couple different brand ones. Or maybe just one other one? I forget now.

NOT!

Bobwehadababyitsaboy
- I remember it as "eeetsaboy"
- This one pops into my head way too often
- This was my first thought lol

Dialup
- Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcchdingdingding
  
  yep. that's the correct spelling for that sound
- Welcome, you've got mail, goodbye...
- Lol lol at you with internet. We didn't get access until 1999.

Psych!
- You know that’s right!

Not a word, but the phrase "going online". As in not being constantly connected at all times. We had to actually "get" online to look at stuff.

Myst

JNCO's
- I still laugh thinking back to 8th grade when my buddy, Tyler, got his first pair of JNCOs. To paint a picture, Tyler couldn't have been more than 90 pounds soaking wet and had a bowl cut (being it the 90s). He had a big goofy grin on his face and goes "check it out - I can fit a whole 2 liter of Mountain Dew in my pocket!" And sure enough, he pulled a full 2 liter of Mountain Dew out of his front pocket.
  
  Tyler was definitely a product of the times

Pogs

D.A.R.E
- Ooo what about "Double-Dare"??
  
  Physical challenge.
  
  I started school in 2006 and I can still remember this being a thing
- I only wear mine when getting really high
- I failed D.A.R.E and they made me watch the ceremony of all the other kid's graduations. I just wasn't interested in drugs.

JNCO

Discman - so much better than the Walkman. =)

Baud. Maybe kilobauds.. That and "da bomb" are very memorable to me from then...
- For a age of pre internet (for the masses) we sure had a lot of unique words :)
- I don't remember kilobaud being a word. I only remember it being a word that was misused for some reason. Or maybe just disfavored against an actual unit. Like it was equivalent to like some small unit, and got outgrown quickly.
  Like when going from bits per second to kilobits per second, I think hair was a single word that meant bits per second, but was not a literal unit, so kilobaud didn't make sense, whereas kilobits did.
  At least that's how I remember it off hand, could be wrong.
  
  Baud rate is the maximum number of transitions per second of the state of a transmission medium. Hz is the actual number of cycles per second, so it varies degending on the data transmitted. Bitrate is the number of bits transmitted per second.
  Usually bits are transmitted in groups with some redundancy to allow errors to be corrected. E.g. early Ethernet used 8b/10b encoding; 8 bits of data were transmitted as a 10 bit "symbol".
  With a 1b/1b encoding baud rate would equal bit rate, but in practice that was essentially never used so the numbers woud diverge. Bitrate is more meaningful to the user.
  SI and binary prefixes can be applied to baud, so kilobaud is certainly a word.
  
  It may have been misused at some point, but "baud" was a word long before the internet, and I distinctly remember my modem at the time using the word baud on the box. I was just a teenager, so I'm sure I was missing key information. It was used, tho.
  Here, this is proving us both right:
  If your modem-to-modem connection is at 14400 bps, it's going to be sending 6 bits per signal transition (or symbol) at 2400 baud. A speed of 28800 bps is obtained by 3200 baud at 9 bits/baud. When people misuse the word baud, they may mean the modem speed (such as 33.6k).
  Kilobaud is definitely a word that means a thing. Baud is a literal unit of measure that uses the metric prefixes.
  ¯(ツ)/¯

Napster

Kkrrrsshhhbiiieieiekkkkrrrrriieiekkkrrsshshshbriiieie
- And then someone picked up the phone and you had to start all over again
- Why did I hear this comment !?! 😂
- Anyone remember upgrading their modem and getting excited because it made new noises? I can’t be the only one.

Be kind, REWIND.

BRRRRphhhhttttttbrrrrrraaaaaapppppingtingtingBOINGBaTingBatingtingphhhhhhhhttttt.....
The sounds of the internet, volume one.

Tubthumping

"Information superhighway"
Two words, I know.

Clear craze.
As in technology. Translucent gadgets were all the rage. Not quite one word, I was going to go with translucent, but found it actually had a name.
- You remember that future phones would be all transparent slabs of glass? Funny how things have changed and also not changed!
- Like the translucent (still corded, so not that hi-tech) phone with the bright colors for all the components? I had one of those! I think the outer part of my cord was actually clear, too.
  Ooh, and that dope clear pager was hella rad!
  On that note, remember payphones?? (getting paged by my mom and having to find a payphone to call the family 800# and check in...)
  
  Wait, family 800 #? I don't remember that. We skipped pagers though, so I remember them being a thing, but I only saw them on TV, don't think I ever saw one in person besides on doctors at a hospital.
  
  You should take a look at the Nothing Phone if you still dig that aesthetic.
- That's how you know technology was inside them. I vaguely remember we had an eMac which had a combined CRT and computer inside it. Do not remember liking it
  
  Your first sentence made me literally laugh audibly. At work.
  Our computer lab when I was in high school was all those eMacs. I hated them and their single mouse button.
  I definitely deleted the system drive from half of them at one point or another. It wasn’t hard, either, it was on the desktop.
  Sure it didn’t actually delete anything on the drive, but it did force an intensive repair (they reformatted all of them, idk if there was another fix) :)
- We need to bring this back. I love clear stuff.
  
  Clear is one of my favorite colors! (along with purple and glow-in-the-dark)
- My mate had a transparent ps1 controller. I wanted it so bad.
  
  i've got a clear ps4 controller. it's pretty cool.
  
  I still have one of those in clear blue, along with clear blue extender cords. Have clear purple GameCube controllers, and a light-up clear Xbox controller 😁
  Now controllers are so heavy I have to skin them to help with hand fatigue, so no point getting clear cases.
  I miss that aesthetic, though, and I’m glad it’s starting to reappear.

Floppy disks (or "diskettes").
Also, Y2K.

Cowabunga

NoFear

Slime/goop
The 90s had an obsession with slime/goop. Toys, mascots, etc.
- Gak.
- You can't do that on television
  Edit: looked it back up, didn't realize that ended in 90. It probably set that stage for slime use in Double Dare and the like

Macarena

IRC and ICQ

Phat

Tamagotchi

autoexec.bat

Wazzzzuuuuuuuup!
with entirely to much tongue.

Hypercolor
- Those were so awesome! How come they don't make hyoercolor shirts anymore?? I'd buy them.
  
  The effect stopped working after a few washes, plus, if you broke a sweat your pits would glow like you were bleeding Gatorade.
  Still rad.