Victoria Barranco: I really,
really miss the headphone jack.
Nich Carlson: I really,
really like AirPods,
and so I'm OK with the
headphone jack being gone.
Jacqui Frank: Also I have
a headphone jack now,
so I'm really smug about it.
I switched from iPhone to Android.
It wasn't the No. 1 reason
that I decided to do that,
but the headphone jack
was important to me.
Barranco: Now I've got this stupid dongle
that I've lost literally three times
in order to listen to my music,
and I'm not buying into the
whole AirPods things, I refuse.
Frank: I mostly use Bluetooth headphones,
so it's actually not a huge impact to me
but still is an irritation.
If my headphones were
dead and I also wanted
to charge my phone, I could never do that,
and I don't like being in that situation.
Barranco: It's just the
security of knowing,
OK, if it did fall out of my ears,
it's not gonna, like, go
rolling down the subway
or something. It's like, OK,
still attached to my phone
if my headphones drop out.
Carlson: Remember how you
would, like, move your arm
and just knock the
earphones out of your ears?
And then sometimes you'd get
them caught on a door handle
as you were walking into a room?
If we had to sacrifice the headphone jack
to get AirPods, which I don't
think is what we had to do,
but if that's what we had to
do, then it was a great trade.
Frank: I just don't
understand why tech companies
want us to choose. Like,
just give us what we want.
We didn't ask for foldable screens,
we asked for headphone
jacks. It's so simple.
Carlson: We got rid of the headphone jack
so that Apple could sell
more iPhones and AirPods.
That is why it is gone.
I know that a lot of people
are very upset about it,
but I have AirPods. I'm good.
Alex Appolonia: AOL Instant Messaging.
Danielle Cohen: AIM was an
instant-messaging platform.
Frank: AIM is basically text messaging
before text messaging was a thing.
Appolonia: I remember the sound
of getting a notification, though.
That's, like, embedded in my head.
Wait, now, it's like, da-ding!
Like, what was it like?
Da-da-ding.
Carlson: Oh, I remember SmarterChild.
Alyse Kalish: Yes, SmarterChild.
It got, like, really scary.
I feel like I would, like,
try to flirt with him
and, like, see if he was interested.
Cohen: I actually had
maybe four AIM usernames.
xxxprettyinpinkxx.
Paige DiFiore: colesprouse4ever
with the 4. That was me.
Appolonia: cheerdivaAl12. I wasn't a diva.
I don't know why that was
part of my screen name.
Frank: firesparx14.
Jennifer Ortakales: sweetchick130693.
Carlson: And then I was also boltz999.
William Antonelli: swordscape40,
because that was the name
I used for RuneScape.
Shannon Murphy: joejonaslover1996,
and I would leave away messages,
like, depending on who he was dating.
I'd be like, "I don't
like you Taylor Swift,"
or like, "I don't like you Demi Lovato."
Something ridiculous, as if they would see
my AIM away message.
Cohen: If a boy liked me, he would write
"Dani <3 <3 <3" as his
status so that everyone knew.
Frank: Insert whatever,
like, emo song was popular
when I was 12, and that
was definitely part of it.
Carlson: People definitely
expressed themselves
with their away messages.
Cohen: At my school,
it was really important
that you put in, like, all
the names of your friends
that are in a clique.
Michelle Yan: What was it, Buddy Lists?
It was, like, "best friends," "friends."
Oh, yeah, I moved people
off my best-friends list
to the friends list.
Cohen: And sometimes, you
know, they would, like,
let a girl know you didn't
make the cut anymore
by taking her out of
everyone else's AIM profile.
Abby Tang: AIM was the
best way to get bullied.
People would make these group chats
and, like, invite me into them,
and then they would, like,
start saying nasty things.
DiFiore: I probably have
catfished people on AIM.
Carlson: Teenage drama, friends, love,
all the things were on AIM.
Ortakales: After school
got out, it's like,
that's how you could talk to your friends.
Antonelli: We would go home,
like, immediately, get on AIM,
and start talking to each
other, like, for hours.
Appolonia: I remember
that adrenaline rush,
like, rushing back to my computer
to see, like, what my
crush might have said,
or something like that.
Carlson: AIM was a key
part of my adolescence.
I think I met a girlfriend on AIM.
Appolonia: It was pre-BBM,
texting, Facebook messaging.
It was really the first way of
feeling instantly connected.
Antonelli: Vine, rest in peace,
was a very wonderful
video-making app, and I miss it.
Barranco: RIP, Vine. It's
just, like, part of millennial,
Gen Z culture.
Quoting Vines is something that, like,
people my age just can do.
Trisha Bonthu: It was a
big part of my personality,
like, growing up in high school.
I think everyone quoted Vines.
Genuinely, like, a big part
of my high-school experience
was going to my friend's house
and spending hours watching Vines.
Barranco: God knows I still end up
at, like, 2 in the morning
watching Vine compilations.
Vine clip: Hey, Tara, you want some?
Tara: It's f------ empty! Yeet!
Barranco: [laughing] Just,
like, the spontaneity of the
soda can getting, like,
tossed across the hallway
and the use of "yeet" that
proliferated culture after that.
Truly inspiring.
Murphy: "'Road work ahead'? Uh, yeah.
I sure hope it does."
Barranco: There was a very
loyal fan base behind Vine,
and a lot of people were
very upset that it went away.
I remember when I heard about
Vine for the first time,
I was like, "What the heck
are people going to do
with six-second videos?"
Like, what could you
accomplish in six seconds?
It's so stupid.
Bonthu: You only have six
seconds to make a joke.
Unless you're, like, really funny,
it was hard to make Vines.
Antonelli: Well, I think
Vine really challenged
a lot of people to get creative
and condense their humor
down into such a format
where everything has to
matter in that six seconds
and every joke has to land.
My favorite Vine is "Back at
it again at Krispy Kreme."
Clip: Back at it again at Krispy Kreme.
Frank: MoviePass is something
I wanted so deeply to work.
Bonthu: I did have MoviePass,
and I used it for, like,
a bit of a summer, and then it was like,
we suck, and we don't work anymore.
Lisa Paradise: MoviePass
was a way to see basically
as many movies as you want in a week.
When I heard about MoviePass,
I signed myself up,
I signed my roommate up,
and I signed my boyfriend at the time up.
I saw every movie that was in theaters.
You saw movies you
didn't really want to see
because, why not? It was free.
I feel like everyone you knew
had MoviePass for a hot second.
Frank: Great, makes sense, I
see a movie every single week.
This is a bargain. I
live in New York City,
going to the movies costs almost $20.
This couldn't be cheaper.
They certainly aren't making
money, so I have to get in now.
Paradise: It was like
being a teenager again
when your parents are paying
for you to go to the movies.
Nate Lee: I saved a lot of
money through MoviePass.
Until it was demolished.
Paradise: I probably saw at
least three movies a week.
They were literally just giving you money
to go see a movie.
Give me an inch, I will
take the whole Oscar lineup.
Frank: And I abused it to no end.
I saw "Black Panther" four
times using my MoviePass,
and they made the rule
that you could only see
a movie one time, like, the next week.
Like, I'm convinced that "Black Panther"
is the reason they had to make that rule.
Lee: At its peak, I watched
every single movie in the theater.
Paradise: I wanted it to last forever,
and even when it started to
die, I clung for too long.
Lee: Well, usually, when
things are too good to be true,
it is too good to be true.
That's I think the biggest
lesson I learned from MoviePass.
Frank: The last, like, two
months I had MoviePass,
I was, like, arguing with
myself on a daily basis,
like, "Do I still have this?
Does it make sense for me to keep this?"
But it was such a terrible service.
It didn't do anything
that I wanted from it,
and I, like, ended up
not seeing any movies
towards the end of it.
Lee: And I think you
can't ignore MoviePass,
just because it really started
this whole subscription phase.
These subscription services
that are so convenient to use now
would not be around if
it wasn't for MoviePass.
Carlson: Blockbuster was
a place where they stored
Netflix movies on tape.
Shayanne Gal: Blockbuster
was, like, my family's,
one of our greatest traditions.
That was the best surprise ever,
when my dad was like, "We're
going to Blockbuster."
Carlson: If the one copy of
the video you wanted to watch
was not at Blockbuster, you could drive
another 10 or 15 minutes
to a Hollywood Video.
Ortakales: Blockbuster was an
amazing, magical place to go
when you're a 10-year-old
kid in the middle of nowhere.
It felt so expansive and, like,
"Oh, my gosh, there's so many movies.
I could watch any movie that I want."
Carlson: And you walk around,
and you're looking at all the boxes
and saying which ones look cool, and....
For me, it was like,
what kind of "Inspector
Gadget" movie do they have?
Gal: I only rented
Mary-Kate and Ashley movies.
Ortakales: I would go
straight, make a beeline
to the kid's section,
and then find my movie while my parents
would, like, be in their section
picking out whatever new
release they wanted to watch.
Gal: And then, at the checkout,
pick out, like, a Nerds Rope
or a chocolate or whatever
they had at the time.
That experience of going
with a family member,
loved one, to a place like that
and being able to, like,
bond over those things
is not replaceable.
Our brains are now wired
in the, like, binge mode.
Like, one movie's not enough.
Like, one episode's not enough.
I'd have to go to Blockbuster,
like, every day for it.
Ortakales: Oh. Well, now
I'm definitely team Netflix.
Gal: Netflix, if I had to choose one,
but I feel like there could
have been an ecosystem
where they both existed.
Carlson: I miss
Blockbuster, but that's OK.
Netflix is great.
Frank: MP3 players are better
CD players are better tape players.
Do people still know what those are?
Barranco: Yeah, I remember
specifically upgrading
from my CD player that
I, like, hand-decorated
with rhinestones in, like, third grade
and listened to the
"SpongeBob SquarePants"
movie soundtrack on, but I
remember all the cool kids
on the bus on field
trips had iPod Touches.
Frank: I used to have a CD player.
It was, like, a good CD player.
I remember it had all these,
like, little stickers on it
that said, "Never skips," or,
"Barely skips," or something,
and that was the best we could hope for.
Like, it sometimes
skipped, and that was fine.
Lee: I just constantly wanted a new one.
I mean, the thing with,
like, the iPod MP3 players,
if you look at, like,
Classic, Touch, and Nano,
all of them were extremely different.
There was a reason to switch.
Very early on,
most MP3 players were
mostly the same, I think,
so I didn't really switch
around, and I, like,
stuck with one for a long time.
Frank: I think MP3 players are flawed
because they only have one function,
but only because we live in the world now
where you expect it to do so much more.
At the time that they were created,
it was mind-blowing!
Genuinely mind-blowing.
"This holds all the music?!"
Lee: And then iPhone sort of
made every MP3 player useless.
Cohen: A BlackBerry is kind
of like a mini-computer.
Frank: BlackBerry is, like, the saddest
version of a smartphone.
Paradise: BlackBerry
was my first smartphone,
and I remember it being so
cool that I could get internet
and Brick Breaker,
like, RIP Brick Breaker.
BlackBerry was, I think,
the first smartphone
that everybody used.
Frank: Now you have the
luxury of being like,
"Oh, it would be like if
iPhones were half as cool."
Cohen: Everyone had a
BlackBerry, and I was
begging my parents to get me one.
My favorite part was BBM,
which was the BlackBerry Messenger.
I loved pinging people.
It was almost like a poke on Facebook,
but a bit more aggressive
because you would ping them
and it would send them a ping in all caps
with a bunch of exclamation marks,
and to this day I still
text people the word "ping."
Frank: My BlackBerry that I had in college
was, like, the first phone I had
that, like, did anything
other than make phone calls.
Like, it had a full keyboard
and, like, honestly what feels now like
the world's tiniest screen,
but at the time was huge.
It was amazing.
I was like, I'm basically a
Wall Street hedge-fund manager
because I have a BlackBerry.
I can answer emails
and send text messages.
I'm so chill.
I'm gonna wear this blazer to class,
and everyone's gonna
know I'm fancy. Insane.
Meg Teckman-Fullard: Amazon
Dash buttons were something that
I still have a few of, I
still kind of use them,
but they're kind of dying.
The way that they wanted
people to use it was, like,
you stick your Tide Pod thing
to your washing machine, so when you go,
"Oh, I'm out of Tide Pods,"
boop! It orders it automatically.
Matt Stuart: I think
Amazon saw it as a way of
customer lock-in and convenience.
"Just tap it, and we'll send you more."
And so it's just a very,
like, kind of sticky way
to keep your customer base.
Teckman-Fullard: There's
something really nice
about the physical and the digital
interacting with each
other in that kind of,
like, George Jetson kind of way.
Jade Tungul: Amazon found
that, like, customers
were using other avenues.
Like, people I think
were using Amazon Alexa
'cause you can use your Alexa.
People were also using the
Subscribe & Save option.
Teckman-Fullard: Opening
the app or opening it
on a web browser is super easy.
This is just one extra-easy step,
and I like easy.
MagSafe is a technology
in which Mac laptops
were able to charge with a power cord
that magnetically connected
instead of actually
having to stick something in.
Jason Sanchez: I guess
it's MagSafe because it's
both magnetic and safe.
The cord just comes off; your
laptop stays on your table.
There's no accidents.
There's no danger of that
getting knocked over.
Apple, in their sort of infinite wisdom,
decided to go away from
the MagSafe for USB-C,
which is great, USB-C is great,
but it doesn't need to
be every single port.
In fact, I don't have one of the newer
MacBooks because of it.
Carlson: The best thing
about Blockbuster, though,
was just going and not
knowing what you wanted.
If you don't know what
you want on Netflix,
it is chaos. You just feel desperate.
I got the autoplay coming at
me, and it's just like, stop!
