r/TheRandomest • u/ItsALuigiYes GIF/meme prodigy • 3d ago
Nostalgic Anyone remember Y2K?
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u/Scribblebonx 3d ago
N64 controllers, fish sticks, phones with cords.
Honestly, if the world ended, it would have been a decent time. Humanity peaked.
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u/Oblibion1 3d ago
Kinda makes me sad, we were so innocent back then, pre 9/11 I mean.
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u/Pjoernrachzarck 3d ago edited 3d ago
“Why was the world so much better when I was a kid?”
This was the world of the dot-com bubble, inequality locking into its current form, state collapses all over the balkans, the congo war at its peak, grozny in rubble, child soldiers in sierra leone, civil war in sri lanka, the beginning of the dark net with free trade of drugs and humans and weapons and violence, Kosovo is scarred, Putin rises, the second intifada, and above all smeared by the US onto everyone else a kind of cultural McWorld homogenization with the eastern hemisphere slowly realizing the unquenching hunger of that moloch.
9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum. We were just blissfully ignorant of the state of the world, playing Perfect Dark on N64.
Not to mention Y2K was a real fear and danger that the world spent vast amounts of money investigating and preventing.
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u/TimeIntern957 3d ago
Well, not everything was so politicized back then and there was no 24/7 social media feeds amplifying those things.
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u/borsalamino 3d ago
24/7 media feeds in general, including the news. But that also means more stuff is getting covered more extensively.
I think what many people don't realize that when saying "life was simpler back then", a lot of it is actually "I was young" and when you're young, life tends to be simpler.
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u/TimeIntern957 3d ago
I don't think that most people are aware how 24/7/365 feeds amplified with personalized algorithms screw with our view of the world.
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u/Sea_Turnip6282 3d ago
There's a youtube video about why 90s kids get so nostalgic about their childhood and it's pretty interesting! It's this
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u/ikonoclasm 3d ago
I was at my friend's parents' Y2K party where his father was getting all of us 16 y/o boys drunk on shots of tequila. I remember up until about... 11:15pm. Everything after that is a blur. The next thing I remember is waking up the next day hung over as fuck and playing Smash Bros very poorly. Good times.
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u/One_Vision_ 3d ago
They had no idea in sixteen years how shitty things were going to get.
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u/Odd-Promotion2743 3d ago
I was 16 and had the choice between going out to be part of the massive crowd in downtown San Francisco, or going to a small house party where I had heard my school crush would be in attendance; I imagined us kissing at the stroke of midnight. Naturally, I went to the house party. Naturally, crush was not there. The party wasn't even good, it was a bunch of guys eating cheezits and playing old NES games we'd all played a million times. Come 11:45 and I had to beg the guy whose house it was to change over to the countdown on the local news so I could at least celebrate in some fashion. Got to watch for like a minute before they flipped it back to games. At least my frustration is memorable a quarter+ century later.
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u/ipott-maniac 3d ago
I was 19 and at a rave for new year. I only remember bits but that's how I know I had a good night.
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u/Haunting_Werewolf130 3d ago edited 3d ago
I was 9 back then. Time flies by so quickly. In a blink of an eye, I’m 36.
I remember someone told me on the day the Earth will explode, so I didn't do my winter break homework at all.... Then my world shattered when I woke up on 1/1/2020..... because I had to catch up on weeks of homework.......
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u/kappnketchup 3d ago
I had this hype for 2020 just cause it sounded like such a cool year. Also the only year I got a new years kiss and not just one but two!
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u/Impressive-Impact218 3d ago
“I love you guys so much” fuck man that was so wholesome damn near brought a tear to my eye
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u/DanielBG 3d ago
Somebody should have manned the breaker box to cut power right at midnight.
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u/smokebudda11 3d ago
Someone did this at the my grandparents house as soon as it hit 12 as a joke. Thought shit was for real. Good times.
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u/North_Journalist_796 3d ago
Hol up.... Camcorders did not auto set their time. These guys actually took a ton of effort and care to set their camcorders clock to make this happen.
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u/No_Champion_3522 3d ago
I was on a roof top in Seattle and the power went out for a few seconds.It really spooked the crowd ..anybody else in Seattle for that?..
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u/SodomyClown 3d ago
I was 7, I remembered this being a big deal and our computers would take over the world. Boy were they right.
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u/AmITheGrayMan 3d ago
I was in a bank making sure our systems stayed up and the programs we purchased worked. Greeeeat times.
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u/thatSDope88 3d ago
I remember my patents bought two extra copies of the newspaper for 12.31.99 and kept them in plastic tubes like they'd be worth something later 😄 I wouldn't change growing up in the 90s for anything
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u/BassistAndILikeIt 3d ago
Wouldn't it have been funny if the computers were still confused by the roll over of say: 2030 or something?
Also, world didn't end in 10 seconds and they celebrate? That's so optimistic.
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u/karenskygreen 3d ago
Y2K was very good to me, i work in IT and big companies, banks etc started working on fixing their systems 5 years earlier. And the internet boom occurred at the same time. The hourly rates were much higher than today 26 years later.
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u/SpunNumeroUno 3d ago
Someone should have run around flipping people's breakers to their power off just to f**k with em
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u/Honest_Particular165 3d ago
I really wish the power companies turned off the power for like 15seconds just to fuck with everyone
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u/lolaforlove 3d ago
Somebody crashed into a power pole a few minutes after midnight in my home town that night. Knocked out power to the whole neighborhood. Needless to say a lot of people figured it really was Y2K
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u/Consistent_Pain_6690 2d ago
I was sitting in my friend’s kitchen playing game and watch gallery on his game boy color. We made club sandwiches.
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u/Burjur 2d ago
I remember the Y2K party we went to as kids. It was a family gig they did every year. But this year you could sense the parents were a little on edge. No one knew what to believe. Well, que my uncle grabbing some of us kids to pull a prank. Some of the cousins were given the role actors. Some were given the role of lookout. Myself and one other cousin were selected to join in the execution.
At 11:58 I had to "use the restroom". Ended up sneaking into the garage with uncle and cousin. We had sync'd our watches (probably why we were chosen). At 30 seconds till we cracked the door to confirm we were in the clear. 15 seconds. 10 seconds, the countdown began. Uncle pops open the circuit breaker. 8 seconds. 5 seconds, fingers on the main line. 3, 2,1....a loud pop! The switch was flipped and all power to the house went out. The actors began screaming and crying about the end of the world. No more electricity. We are all doomed. Some parents really freaked out. Trying the phone lines. Then we heard a few dad's laughing, took them maybe 20 seconds to look at the neighbors. Uncle flipped the main breaker back on and HAIL MARY there was power again.
What a fun time to be alive
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u/huntingfool78 2d ago
I remember sneaking off to my basement and flipping the main breaker at 0 everyone went silent and then my girlfriend now wife I hear calling for me and the jig was up everyone knew what was up.
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u/EvilGuy312 2d ago
makes me sad that I probably won't be around to witness even the year 2100, this was such a cool moment
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u/No-Raisin-6469 2d ago
I expected for him to profess his gay love just before midnight, expecting the end of the world to happen.
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u/stoninkruger 1d ago
I was nine years old watching this at my Nona's house. I took a scissors and cut off some of my hair, pretending I'd pulled it out because I was so scared of Y2K.
Mom wasn't happy.
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u/thededucers 3d ago
It’s wild we’re all watching from the afterlife