Reddit Explains A Few Everyday Things We Do That Would Be Absolutely Bonkers 50 Years Ago
I came across a viral thread on Reddit that asked users what we do that is completely normal today that would have been considered totally bonkers 50 to 60 years ago. My initial thought was that this question would yield boring and painfully obvious results. While the results were definitely obvious, they were far from boring. From distressed clothing to pausing live television, I listed the best ones below.
Kids Not Having "Unsupervised Time"
Home monitoring systems have made it impossible for kids these days to have any unsupervised time. Back in the day, kids used to come home, drop their bags, grab a snack and race out the door to go play in the courtyard until mom leaned out the window and called out for dinner.
Driving To Places Less Than Half A Mile Away
Most of us are culprits of this. Personally, I don't own a car, but I'll the first to tell you that if I did, I'd be using it to drive to the corner store and back because whenever I'm at my parents' place and have access to a car, I do exactly that. It's a bad habit.
Charging Your Cigarette
The thought that e-cigarettes would come to exist probably never crossed anyone's mind a century ago. I feel like most SciFi writers predicted flying cars, ray guns, and teleportation, but never e-cigarettes, at least none that I know of. Having to charge a cigarette doesn't seem like such a big deal when you compare it to the other big change smokers have had to suffer through. You can read about that a few slides later.
Throwing Stuff Away
Back in the day, when things broke, people would do just about anything to salvage the item so that they didn't have to go out and buy a new one. Now, things are manufactured so cheaply that it has become cheaper to simply throw away what's broken and replace it with something new.
Doggy Day Care
The way we treat our pets has changed drastically from the way we used to treat them. People owned pets for practical reasons like chasing down rats or warding off possible intruders. Now we see our pets as friends, the kind who deserve deluxe treatment, a bed to sleep in and expensive surgery when they're sick.
No Smoking Indoors
Remember, it wasn't until the 90s that anti-smoking campaigns really took off. In the '50s and '60s, people may have had an idea that smoking was bad for you but they didn't really know to what extent. Not to mention, everyone smoked, so it was inconceivable at the time that smokers would be relegated to doing it outdoors. If you think our view on smoking has changed drastically, it doesn't even begin to compare to this other technology further on the list.
Taking Out Loans To Attend College
The concept that people of average socioeconomic status should have to take out a loan to pay for an education that they were required to have in order to gain employment, just so they can spend years paying it off with the job they got seems absurd. But, that's the country we live in.
Having Close Friends You Never Met
Social media has opened the door to many opportunities that never existed 50 years ago, including becoming friends with someone across the world whom you've never met in person. Sure, people used to have pen pals, but it's not quite on the same level as having 30 Facebook friends from 10 different countries or developing a strong relationship with someone through a video game console.
Calling Someone To Ask Where They Are
We do this all the time. We call or text people to find out where they are because there's no way of knowing when we're calling someone on their cellphone. When you called people on the home phone, you didn't have to ask where they were because you already knew the answer. The way we treat phones has changed in more ways than one. Read on if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Recording Television
If you told someone that in 50 years they'd be recording, pausing, or fast forwarding television to skip all the advertisements they would have called you crazy. My grandparents can hardly work a basic remote synced up to the rear-projection television they still have sitting in their living room.
Pirating Music And Movies
This one seems simple enough. However, it's worth taking a step further. I doubt anyone 50 years ago would have thought for one second that they would one day be able to pay 10 bucks a month and have access to the world largest database of music and movies.
The Smartphone
As one Reddit user put it, "I can get a plane ticket, read the news, and order food in 10 minutes through a small device while sitting on the toilet." Smartphones are convenient. You can do just about everything with them without having to talk to a single person. Wait till you read what one Reddit user had to say about money.
Hanging TVs On The Wall
TV technology has come along way. Rear projection televisions were the standard until about the early 2000s when plasma screen TVs became popular. Today, you won't find a restaurant that doesn't have at least one television mounted above the bar area. Even people at home mount their televisions on the wall.
Spending Hours Staring At A Phone
Staring at a phone for hours is completely normal to us because we don't really treat it like a traditional telephone but rather an all-encompassing device we can use to watch TV, read the news, surf the web, play games and host video calls. My grandfather still uses a flip phone so I can see why he can't relate.
Walking Around With No Cash
Credit cards have existed for over 50 years. The concept of buying stuff on credit isn't a 21st-century invention. However, the number of people who pay almost exclusively with credit cards has increased drastically over past 50 years. It's not uncommon for someone to own two, sometimes three different credit cards — VISA, Mastercard, Amex. Carrying cash is considered old school, like ringing the doorbell or using the yellow pages.
Wearing Distressed Clothing
My great-grandfather was a tailor. His son — my grandfather — doesn't own a pair of jeans. He wears dress pants and a dress shirt every day. Distressed clothing is one thing he will never wrap his head around. "80 bucks for a pair of ripped jeans? You must be crazy for buying that," I remember him saying to me. He's not wrong for thinking like that, but hey, that's just the way it is, I guess.
Working From Home Or Having A Virtual Office
The traditional home office was a place where people could bring work home to when they didn't have time to finish it during regular working hours. Depending on the field, people can do their job and work for a company without ever having to step foot in the office.
Not Ringing The Doorbell
This is one bad habit I think all millennials are guilty of. It's become much easier to sit in the car and send a text that reads "I'm here" when picking someone up or arriving at a friends house than actually walking up to the door and ringing the bell. We still do it on occasion, just not a frequently as we used to. I saved the best two for last, so keep scrolling because you're almost there.
Gay Marriage
This is just a fact. Half a century ago same-sex marriages were illegal. Relationships between two people of the same sex were forbidden. It took years for society to recognize gay marriage as being equal to opposite-sex marriage. Laws protecting rites of marriage for same-sex couples vary from one jurisdiction to another but unions of this nature are recognized in over a dozen countries around the world.
Unmanned Space Travel
The Reddit user who made the comment said it best so I won't bother paraphrasing it. "Refraining from manned space exploration. Fifty years ago mankind was two years away from walking on the moon. They'd be appalled to realize that we just stopped after getting there." The last human spaceflight program was decommissioned in May 2016.
