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Growing up before the internet age

nush

Member
I worked in the wrong industries at the wrong time.

I missed all the crazy shit the old timers at my companies told me happened in the 80s and 90s. Crazy sales parties where everyone flies to the Carribean or New Orleans. People hooking up banging each other. Hell, some people hooked up so much they fucking got married!

Things were loosey goosey with fax sheets and print outs (not computer tracked) so sales people were pocketing incentives meant for accounts. And the corporations didn't care either because it was a free for all offering buyers fancy dinners, sports tickets, giving store managers TVs and fishing rods just for ordering a skid of product. The wild west of money thrown everywhere. The account managers would help load the store managers van and they'd see inside it with other prizes and perks other reps gave him.

I missed all of it by the time I started working at a decent role FT! Everything was got buttoned down when I started my career and the type of companies I work for arent the ones to be showering employees with free food or $1000 office chairs.

Honestly I was.

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The up and coming guys didn't get that but they had heard the legends and when they thought they had made it to Boys club, boys club no longer existed. I did take pity on one guy who was "Me back in the day" and hooked him up. Except he was a dumb shit and started talking when he got back to the office. Fucking stupid millennials.

I used to see all the "Creative accounting", wasnt my area but still came in useful later on.
 

Raven117

Member
Yup. It was fantastic. Discovery. Having to figure things out on your own. The sense of accomplishment of simply living your day to day life was a reward in and of itself.
 

Ionian

Member
Keep your Lobster Salad, I used to be able to expense hookers and lap dancers.

R-C.0e6934b7590caa6fb39621fe9f968fe6

Had my boss in Barca buy me them. Hookers and cocaine. Wild to think about now. He used to send them into my bedroom when I was asleep.

Easy way to wake-up.

Snort some coke and bang a whore. He even flew me to London, had table of coke and sent me out with some, bitch brought me to a deafening Drum and Bass place.

I just left. She followed me back to his hotel room. Was crazy. Was on the bosses dime, I just wanted away from her. He gave out to me. I said I wasn't interested. So he got me another.

Was living with his brother. This was when he sent me to London (from Barca) to help his sisters new business. She never sold a thing. I just got drunk all the time. The hookers and coke though was amazing as they were free. Oh to be young again. ;)

(I mostly just talked to them while snorting coke, some were insistant on fucking so they could leave, I was in no rush, I wasn't paying them.)

Pretty sure I got brain damage due to it. Went on to work back in Ireland, had a Polish girlfriend for 10-11 years. Never touched coke again or whores again. Even got an honours degree in computer science.

Polish lass, girl I worked with and invited me to her hen-party. I thought that very odd but fuck it. Her mate started snogging her, I thought WTF? is going on. It was wild, she had a boyfriend. I didn't believe her.

I nearly married her. She dumped me when I was in hospital. We still talk.
 

Brigandier

Member
The internet and social media fucked a lot of things up, I'm absolutely glad I grew up without them.

I looked forward to Edge and OPM every month to learn more about games I was looking forward to etc same with consoles.

Mobile phones were just starting to be a thing and the Dreamcast came out in my last year of school, Internet was dial up back in 1999/2000.

I really miss them days 😭
 

RickSanchez

Gold Member
Walking into an arcade to see a new game you never heard of. Finding a new book in a book store. Picking up a new comic book. Reading about video games in magazines and having to imagine how they look and play. Opening a newspaper and finding out theres a cool movie playing in your local theater.

100% agree my dude. I'm in my mid thirties. There was a time when i watched a movie or played a game knowing only its name and nothing else. No trailer, no plot synopsis, no reviews, no user comments, no recommendations from multiple internet sources, nothing. And it felt great. Because every single scene and story beat was new.

Only coming to know about great new games by walking into a physical store was wild!

That magic is lost to us now. I pity the younger generation even more. They will never know that kind of feeling of discovering a piece of media completely fresh and unspoiled.
 
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nush

Member
ad my boss in Barca buy me them. Hookers and cocaine. Wild to think about now. He used to send them into my bedroom when I was asleep.

I had a boss that did that stuff to me as well.

Do you want the girl?

naa I'm alright mate.

* 5 minutes later..*

I paid for the girl for you.

Well, she's been paid for now, shame to waste that money. To be fair though they were always high quality, nothing to complain about.
 

pramod

Banned
Some of my fond memories (this will show how fucking old i am):

Finding a Choose Your Own Adventure book in a bookstore for the first time..my boyish mind was blown. Then it was blown even more when i found out theres a whole series of them.

Getting a Milton Bradley Dark Tower for Xmas.

I was really into DnD and i begged my mom to get me a subscription to Dragon Magazine. Getting it in the mail was always the best day of the month.

Finding a weird comic book i never heard of called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". It was so weird and cool at the sametime i had to buy a copy.
 
Can't expect to have hookers in the MeToo era... Feminazis would screech about the "patriarchy" exploiting them.

That's why we have simps paying a "living wage" to OnlyFans whores.
 

Griffon

Member
I'm also a kid from pre-internet era, and I'll be frank: it was the fucking dark ages.

No instant access to education and information, no way to check game footage before buying, having to buy monthly magazines to get reviews and news. No online, no VR, shitty portable gaming, expensive games, no dedicated communities and no meaningful exchange between like-minded gamers.

I'll tell you how the 80s and 90s felt for me: I felt isolated as fuck. The internet changed my whole life and I would never go back.
 
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