Millennials Are Sharing Phrases They'd Always Hear Growing Up In The '90s That You’d Never Hear Today
If you're a millennial, then you probably have lots of words or phrases that you no longer use because they're either outdated slang or reference things we don't do anymore. For example, "Call me after 7 p.m., when it's free" is something you probably said a lot in the early '00s when cell phone plans came with monthly talk minutes limits, but you probably haven't said it in at least 18 years.
Recently, Reddit user PuzzleheadedSwim6291 decided to revisit all those old phrases when they asked, "Millennials: What’s a phrase we'd always hear growing up that you’d never hear today? "
Well, millennials didn't disappoint, as the thread got over 9.3K responses. Below are the top, best, and most-often repeated phrases that we no longer hear anymore:
1."Be kind, rewind."
"I feel like the notion of having to rewind movies using a physical process must be so foreign to kids today."
2."[insert sister’s name], quit listening and hang up the phone!!!"
"This actually just made me realize that the term 'hang up' is actually pretty dated in itself, not that it’s going anywhere, it’s just that the action it referred to has been outdated by technological progress."
3."'I got it!!!' When the house phone rang."
"Also, 'Is [friend’s name] there?' When the parent picks up the home phone."
4."Smoking or non-smoking seats?"
"My parents, with a 4 and 5-year-old in tow: 'First available!' Which was always smoking. Not that it mattered because they smoked in the house, too. And because smoke travels. I must have smelled like shit at school until we moved when I was 10."
5."'Tape it' in regard to recording TV shows."
"I've got a coworker who dictates letters and refers to all visual media he is requesting as 'tapes,' and no matter what we do, he just can't stop saying it. So, we just correct it in the drafting phase since half the people receiving the letters would take a second to realize what he's asking for."
6."Get off the internet. I'm expecting an important phone call".
7."Talk to the hand, 'cause the face ain't listening."
"'Talk to the hand, cuz the face ain’t home, if the hand ain’t home then talk to the tone of BEEP' (gotta shout that part). That’s how I learned it, lol."—tangerinelibrarian
8."Okay, put your pogs away, we're going to Kmart."
"And maybe, if you're good, we'll stop off at Circuit City, Toys 'R' Us, or KB Toys on our way home."
9."'Bud'... 'Weis'... Er!'"
10."You won't always have a calculator."
"The hell of it is, if you were doing ANYTHING in life that routinely required you to use algebra skills, YES, YOU F'ING WOULD have carried a calculator with you by default. They were lying even by the standards of the '80s and '90s!"
11."Gotta check the want ads for jobs!"
"And just go drop off resumes at random places/fill out applications! The manager will give you a job if you ask; this is the best way to find a job!"
12."Describing the internet as an 'information superhighway.'"
13."'You will have to write everything in cursive!' I am only 30, and apparently, they stopped teaching cursive the year below me."
"Yeah, I used to actually write in cursive a lot but never noticed that I gradually did so less and less, and now I don't even remember how to write anything in cursive but my own name."
14."Up your butt and around the corner."
"I once heard someone say, 'Up your ass, around the corner, and all the way to California' and I decided I'm stealing that!"
15."It was the bomb!"
16."I'm still living in a 'sike!' is still a used word world."
17."Did you remember to print the directions to our destination?"
"And it was always from MapQuest, and it was never right 😭."—Background-Budget293
18."I need to develop this roll of film."
Dimatlt633 / Getty Images, Coprid / Getty Images/iStockphoto
"I need to return some videotapes."—BettyDare
19."'Dude, I found my dad’s stash of Playboy magazines.' Although I live in Texas, so maybe the kids who don’t know how to use a VPN will experience that again."
"Did you ever find porn in the woods? I feel like that's a quintessential millennial experience."
20."'Don't sit so close to the TV.' Console TVs are long gone, and modern setups basically never have your screen on the floor so sitting close really isn't much of an option anymore."
"And now you have VR headsets, which are TVs you put within literal inches of your eyeballs."
21."'The commercials are ending!!!' Or just the simple, 'It’s back ooooooooooooooooon!!!' from your sibling as you sprint back from bathroom or kitchen for your show."
"The adrenaline rush, man. I was sitting on the toilet the other day, watching a show on Hulu on my phone with my headphones on, and it just struck me that I no longer have to time my bathroom breaks with commercials.
If someone told younger me that someday, I could either pause a show or take it with me, I'd have thought they were being ridiculous."
22.And lastly, "'You can't believe anything you read on the internet,' claimed my baby boomer parents before they discovered the joy of voluntarily radicalizing themselves on Facebook."
You can read the original thread on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
