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How was life different 15 years ago?

130 replies

jamontoastaddict · 10/11/2022 19:12

  1. I don't mean personally but generally.

Got me thinking in another thread about something that happened (relatives accident) 15 years ago and it seem so recent yet seems so long ago too. 15 years before that was 1992 so I imagine 2007 seems a different lifetime 1992.

Anyway what has changed. I remember topping up my non-smart phone (Samsung clam) by text and that seemed so much better than a top up card.

OP posts:
Feysriana · 10/11/2022 21:44

One pound was worth TWO dollars. Not one. TWO.

Heating and hot water were so cheap you didn’t think about them.

Food banks were almost unheard of.

Politicians didn’t bunk off on holiday when being paid to be in Westminster.

World War 3 seemed laughably unlikely.

Overseas holidays were cheap.

You could say things like “that’s a bit gay” and not get fired.

Motorways didn’t have weirdos glued into them.

TV was a LOT less violent.

We all had the automatic right to live anywhere in Europe we fancied.

There weren’t thousands of illegal migrants landing in Kent every month.

Climate change wasn’t causing major problems for anyone yet.

It was a very different time.

Sigh…

FiveMins · 10/11/2022 21:49

1992 otoh was amazing. Criminal justice Bill was just a twinkle in Michael Howard's eye. We could dance to repetitive beats in a field all night long. No mobiles, internet or social media. Everything organised by phones. If you said you would met someone you would go. No flaking. I had headspace to read. Mind you the overt racism, homophobia and sexism was fucking awful and the Tories were endless.

Ihaveoflate · 10/11/2022 21:52

It doesn't feel like that long ago to me, but I suppose 15 years is quite a while.

No smartphone or WiFi at home (just dial up), lots of stuff still done on paper I suppose, and no Netflix or other on demand streaming services that I remember.

I don't feel like things have changed as much as they did from the early 90s to 2007, but maybe that's because of my age more than anything (teenager in the 90s).

FiveMins · 10/11/2022 21:54

@Feysriana "You could say things like “that’s a bit gay” and not get fired" oh yes fabulous memories of casual homophobia. Wish we could still get our arses pinched too. Loved the boss having a gentle grope. So "uptight" to moan about it.

dirndldancer · 10/11/2022 21:55

This was when social media started to really kick off wasn't it? Think I got FB around 2006. Most people didn't have smart phone yet we just used them to call and text so we weren't so 'switched on' all the time.

dirndldancer · 10/11/2022 21:59

Another thing was how social media was used then. People would go out with a digital camera then upload an album of crap pictures called something like 'night out at xxx' you'd get tagged in terrible pics you could untag and people didn't care about all the pics of them then on FB smashed out of their minds looking a total mess. How times have changed!

BogRollBOGOF · 10/11/2022 22:01

I got on to facebook. Few photos as they had to be uploaded from the digital computer to the PC.

I went travelling and used internet cafés to keep in touch. I didn't take a phone. (Nor when I went away a couple of years later. Kindles hadn't quite come in and I had to take some meaty books with me) I came back and something weird had happened and people had been queuing outside Northern Rock.

I mainly communicated by SMS. I can't remember when I got a phone with a camera but the images were pretty poor to begin with. I had basic internet on a phone by 2009/10, then had a couple of Blackberry styles.

I did have the internet at home. We might have gone past dial up? I remember still being on dial up in 2005 and that occupied the phoneline.

Soggy summer. My school couldn't hold a sports day due to heavy rain and waterlogged ground. Flooding.

I was switching from VHS to DVDs. Still buying lots of CDs. I still had a car with a cassette player, but I had a tape with a lead that I could attach to an MP3 player/ portable CD player- that was more future friendly than my next car with CD only!

It doesn't seem long ago. Mobile phone/ app use is the biggest change and the internet becoming more portable. I had to do maths on how long ago and the answer just doesn't add up. It was the begining of the end of a good era, not just being more carefree in my mid-20s on a good income; it was genuinely more positive in so many ways. It wasn't one perpetual crisis to another.

BertieBotts · 10/11/2022 22:02

Internet on phones wasn't that much later. I remember my sister had a slightly newer phone than me - I had the 3310 that everyone had with the swappable covers! She got the 3410 or something and it came with a free trial of WAP so she was on the wap internet all the time. No idea what this was Grin I think just text-based forums??

But I remember being in the car feeling anxious when DS1 was tiny, that would have been 2009, and XP had the new iPhone 3G that could go online and marvelling that I could browse MN in the car to distract myself from his driving. That felt amazing - I guess I had no idea how much it would take over.

2007 though - I had this work at home freelance job answering questions on this service called AQA (any question answered) - you could text in which cost a POUND!! And get a reply back to any question. It was often people asking for directions, a phone number, or which takeaways were open, but you also got really interesting or random questions too. I loved it! It was so fun. I got paid about 20p for every question I answered and you had to try and pack as much info into 140 characters as possible without using text speak. It died a death in about 2010 because smartphones had really kicked off then and everyone had twitter. Looking back it's mad that people paid for stuff like ringtones and phone backgrounds? They were all listed in magazines and you could text to order them and they were so expensive.

Social media was very much in its infancy and I used it to connect with my actual friends only and it was a pain to upload photos because you had to get them off the camera or camera phone onto the computer with a card reader or USB cable, and then load up the website very slowly and load them on one by one. There are whole reams of photos I lost because I never transferred them onto a computer before the phone died. Also all phones had different chargers based on what brand they were, so if you ran out of charge and you hadn't brought yours with you you were completely out of luck.

Everything online was blogs and forums, it felt very personal and you could make strong connections with strangers. The internet felt like a completely different realm from "real life" - I think social media was the thing that changed that. I loved my computer, and was on it all the time playing Sims 2 or posting endlessly on forums, reading blogs. I learned about twitter from this ambulance driver blog I used to follow (he wrote a book - Blood, Sweat and Tea - it's great, you should read it) and when it first started, it was text message based - you texted your tweets in to a special phone number and it would connect to your account and post the tweet. The tweets of anyone you followed would then come through to your own phone. You couldn't do this today, it would drive you mad. But it worked (and was even quite nice!) back when you followed maybe 10-20 people and they all posted occasionally.

BogRollBOGOF · 10/11/2022 22:08

Wasn't Crazy Frog about 2005, so 2007 may still have been the era of late night adverts being for ring tones rather than the current/ ongoing torrent of online gambling.

The internet was much more free- financially.

Mammalamb · 10/11/2022 22:12

we got married in 2007. Didn’t have a smartphone, so had to use the PC in the living room. If DH came home from a night out and saw the living room curtains were shut, he’d asked me if I was watching porn. (I usually was lol)

BananaGrana · 10/11/2022 22:13

I was 30 and bought my first house with a 5% deposit. All my friends bought around the same time because you could self cert if necessary and even borrow 105% if you didn’t have enough for the stamp duty or conveyancing costs. Was seen as a little bit risky but obviously they’re all quids in now.

BitOutOfPractice · 10/11/2022 22:15

We had a labour government. Nobody was glued to their phone.

IamlividandfumingIam · 10/11/2022 22:20

OceanbreezeSun · 10/11/2022 21:06

I was in my 2nd year at uni, house sharing with 4 of my pals. RnB music was great back then, we’d go to this brilliant RnB night every Thurs and dance the night away. Tuesday night was indie night at this dirty dive club - also brilliant. The ‘work hard, play hard’ slogan of uni was still very much in effect, I don’t think it’s like that now. the work hard bit is, but students I see nowadays seem different somehow, more serious? Mature? I’m not sure, I could be talking bollocks.

Facebook was just getting popular.
Pretty sure camera phones didn’t exist, so nights out were not spent posing for pics or videos/ Snapchat’s, worrying how you looked or who would see the picture. A lot of memories are just that, memories with no photographic evidence.

It doesn’t feel that long ago in some ways. If I come by the odd picture (taken with a clunky digital camera) it’s always interesting to see the fashion etc, we all look a lot younger, but it feels quite fresh. On the other hand, certain things/memories feel like such along time ago.

Aah you describe it so well.

I think social media kicked off properly in 2007, and then began more posing and less living. I miss it.

Calmdown14 · 10/11/2022 22:23

Well mortgage rates were about the same. I bought my first flat on a tracker and first month I was in it went up to 6.25%.

Turned out tracker was a good decision after that point though

ny20005 · 10/11/2022 22:26

My cats 15 today & I was showing my son a photo of him with him as a toddler. He wanted to know why the date was on the photo. He was horrified to discover no camera phones & we actually had to dig out a camera if we wanted photos

autienotnaughty · 10/11/2022 22:29

I was in my twenties doing festivals, weekends away and have fun. I remember the enemy, scissors sisters, kaiser chiefs, one night only, fratellis, wombats, zutons. Now I'm in my forties overweight, worn down with kids, pets and elderly parents.

Buckland123 · 10/11/2022 22:37

I absolutely hate the music from that era. 00s music is truly terrible - either shitty X factor stuff or crap like the Arctic Monkeys & the Coral or Lily Allen & Kate Nash. Late 00s is when Coldplay went shit too. Also loads of dirge from Beyoncé / Rihanna - all awful. I think it got better again about 2014ish. I never listen to anything from about 2002-2012 as I hate it all!

Cheerfulcharlie · 10/11/2022 22:37

I think in 2007 I did a Waitrose /Ocado shop for the first time and online supermarket shopping was quite a new thing - possibly only mainstream in London?

Also remember having to visit Internet cafes while travelling in Europe on holiday!

Redwineandroses · 10/11/2022 22:41

dirndldancer · 10/11/2022 21:59

Another thing was how social media was used then. People would go out with a digital camera then upload an album of crap pictures called something like 'night out at xxx' you'd get tagged in terrible pics you could untag and people didn't care about all the pics of them then on FB smashed out of their minds looking a total mess. How times have changed!

Ah yes they did! I have some people on FB who still have those albums on their fb page, usually titled "xxx night out at x nightclub," and "so and so's birthday drinks. No one creates albums like that anymore, in fact most just post to their stories where it disappears after 24 hours.

OhJimmyJimmy · 10/11/2022 22:42

Everyone looks back on their own era with a certain degree of nostalgia, but I work with people who are roughly the age I was in 2007 and they all seem so serious and worried. I suppose the prospect of minimum £30000 student debt, constant negative news updates, successive Tory governments that have thrown young people under the bus, and social media would do that to you. Everyone is so on high alert about everything, and so accessible through various modes of communication. I was 20/21 in 2007, worried very little about money and the future, and had a lot of fun without feeling like I was on "show", which I think a lot of young people do now.

Cheerfulcharlie · 10/11/2022 22:42

And I got a 110% mortgage in 2006 although the rate was over 5 or 6%.
Friends Reunited was a thing! Maybe just tailing off by 2007.

Allmyarseandpeggymartin · 10/11/2022 22:46

I’m pretty sure it was the year that Gavin and Stacey got married!

Redwineandroses · 10/11/2022 22:50

2007... I was still using video/dvd rental shops like blockbuster and we had a local independent one. Mobile phones had cameras but they weren't very good and if you accidentally hit the internet button you'd frantically press to go back because you thought you'd be charged £££s.

Binge watching involved watching a dvd box set as streaming services didn't exist. I'd use a PC to post on Mumsnet and spend hours on it because it took so long to load up rather than dipping in and out throughout the day like nowadays on my phone.

I got my first Ipod where I spent hours, and a fortune, buying songs from iTunes.

YukoandHiro · 10/11/2022 22:51

Oh yes PP has just reminded me and I used to regularly hire dvds from a local independent film store around that time. Seems like ancient history now.

Roundaboot · 10/11/2022 22:51

Cheerfulcharlie · 10/11/2022 22:37

I think in 2007 I did a Waitrose /Ocado shop for the first time and online supermarket shopping was quite a new thing - possibly only mainstream in London?

Also remember having to visit Internet cafes while travelling in Europe on holiday!

Nah, online shopping was definitely a thing by then. DS was born in 2007 and I never went to the supermarket when I was on mat leave, it was online Tesco orders for me in the suburban south east.

I didn't have a smart phone when he was born. I remember taking an actual camera to hospital and then uploading the photos to our laptop (shared with exP) to post on Facebook.