true things that 30-years-ago-you would refuse to believe

"So yeah, in 2026 Metallica is doing a Vegas residency."

"Yeah, they made a new Bubsy game and it's actually pretty good."

"The 90s band that's most influential today? Oh, jeez. I don't know. Weezer?"

"Keanu Reeves is one of the most respected actors working today. Yeah, the guy from Johnny Mnemonic. It turns out Johnny Mnemonic is pretty good if you watch it in black and white. No, I am not 'shitting you'."

radiohead sucks buddy

someone say it

and i don't mean boris johnson as PM

"That former fast food vendor ranting about being 'swamped by Asians' in September 1996 is viewed as a credible electoral option by a quarter of Australians in 2026."
(A bit niche for ILX, but the '30 years' criterion seemed almost to demand it.)

Are we possibly missing a really, really big one?

Yeah i don’t think i had even been online in 1996 so

Yeah 11yo me didn’t partic know or care about Donald trump let alone boris Johnson so all I can think of is world of tomorrow tech stuff like smartphones & the internet but even with that i wouldn’t disbelieve any of it

8 year old me: Greece would be more successful in international football tournaments than England.

I will never earn more than my dad gets from his pension.

30 years ago? think i'd already given up on the future by then

I was pretty certain even then fascism would reemerge, just sooner than I thought. I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me that the right would base everything on misreadings of Lord of the rings and anime.

More like 40 years ago, but I do remember predictions for how cable TV would become a highly tailored, indispensable interface for your home. It would have just the information you wanted, and none of what you didn't, and it would become a primary means of interacting with the world. You could use it to get precisely your preferred news and - eventually- you would use it for video calls with your loved ones. We already knew TV was replacing newspapers (because USA Today came in a TV-shaped box).

That it would come to pass, but with phones instead of TVs (and many people would stop bothering with TV and cable) might have seemed mildly surprising.

Funnily enough I was just thinking about this because I was cleaning out old stuff and found a Washington Post Magazine issue from 2007 with the theme "what will the world be like in the distant year 2025?"

Evidently I'd saved it in the hopes of taking it out for the lols in 2025.

I misspoke, it was 2008

https://i.postimg.cc/fW87KR7V/20260922-183926.jpg

Ah the Jetsons-like future

https://i.postimg.cc/jqccFXTR/FB-IMG-1791805947035.jpg

Text is here https://wapo.st/3VE8pid

That online dating is mainstream, and probably even the primary channel for dating.

Not sure when the internet became undeniable - maybe around 1997? In the early 90s, I remember reading lots of articles about how CD-ROMS were the future of communications.

lol pace the Post monkey dating is sadly not mainstream in 2025.

Online dating is a good one. When I met my now-wife in 1998, I was (absurdly) in charge of the personals ads section of the City Paper. We met socially through mutual friends, as one did. Part of our first conversation was about the strangeness of finding dates via print advertisements; app-based dating seemed stranger still.

It's thanks in part to online hookups in 1999 that I came out.

No denying it's helped people! Just remarking on the shift in attitudes

someone say it

― mookieproof, Sunday, October 11, 2026 8:52 PM (yesterday)

Are we possibly missing a really, really big one?

― Zelda Zonk, Monday, October 12, 2026 2:45 AM (four hours ago)

yeah i just didn't want to lead with it because it would have fucked the vibe

"oh also donald trump is the fascist dictator of america"

(my family had a copy of "trump, the game" growing up lol, i mean i grew up in new jersey so my parents absolutely fucking hated him but we still had a copy of that game)

i also was on the internet really early and genuinely believed the internet was The Future, so for me the version would be

"yeah, it turns out the internet is bad. really really really bad."

30 years ago? think i'd already given up on the future by then

― L'enfer, c'est les otters (Noodle Vague), Monday, October 12, 2026 4:32 AM (two hours ago)

i mean if we're gonna get really dark i could hit 30-years-ago-me with "you're alive" but that wasn't really the kind of shit i was thinking

none of my immediate friends groups are virgins

i mean if we're gonna get really dark i could hit 30-years-ago-me with "you're alive" but that wasn't really the kind of shit i was thinking

this is what I came to post haha

"so yeah, you're a girl" would be a big one for me but i've gone on enough about that elsewhere. 20-year-old me's response would probably be something along the lines "and what, exactly, am i supposed to do with that information?", and that's not a question i can possibly answer.

I think for me the real answer would just be how dumb and cruel everything has gotten and what a disappointment my own generation (x) turned out to be in our middle/old age.

of like

"yeah the simpsons are still on"
"led zeppelin and such are really popular with christian fundamentalists"
"the beatles have finally stopped being the Greatest Band of All Time"
"comic book superheroes are mainstream, all the blockbusters now are, like, avengers movies"

I think for me the real answer would just be how dumb and cruel everything has gotten and what a disappointment my own generation (x) turned out to be in our middle/old age.

― beard papa, Monday, October 12, 2026 9:12 AM (five seconds ago)

i'd like to think that, but 30 years ago i _also_ thought everything was stupid and pointless so i would've bought that pretty easily. oh, the people who bullied me in high school for being "gay" are rich and powerful now? gee, that's a shocker. nah, i'd have a harder time accepting that i actually _am_ gay.

"the Rolling Stones are still on tour"

yeah, you have a point. I was pretty disenchanted back then as well. I guess if anything I possibly blamed most of it on older generations and thought things would be different by the time we were calling the shots.

oh, "we're in a shooting war with Iran, and we're losing"

radiohead sucks buddy

― old helen (map), Sunday, October 11, 2026 8:47 PM (yesterday)

lol in 1996 radiohead were still "that band that did creep" to me

Everything sucks and everything is dumb and cruel is a pretty evergreen sentiment, tbf. The 90s were not all shiny happy people for whom the future was so bright they needed to wear shades; I kinda remember the opposite sentiment expressed.

the beatles are still, ofc, the greatest band of all time

"the Rolling Stones are still on tour"

― beard papa, Monday, October 12, 2026 11:16 AM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I rewatched The Critic recently and there was a joke about the Rolling Stones being geriatrics on their current tour, iirc that show ran from 94-95 or something so they would've been only in their early 50s.

of course part of that is middle aged folks scan as old people when you're young, hell I remember "Intergalactic" playing on MTV all the time and thinking it was cool they were still playing the old guys, even though I think they were like 33 years old. "Fight For Your Right" (which came out the year I was born) seemed so old back then.

There was already a joke in 1989 about The Who going on tour as "The Huh?"

That high quality pot would be cheap and legal. And perhaps even more surprisingly, I would not be regularly taking advantage of that opportunity.

That certain friends and relations would be teetotal.

Re: Rolling Stones

I feel like previous generations of showbizzers mostly retreated from public life in their 60s, save talk show appearances. The idea of octogenarians having active careers, or even active retirements seemed pretty alien. Cagney doing Ragtime when he was 82 in 1981 was a spectacle. Still felt very true in the 90s, and still pretty unusual around time Leonard Cohen released You Want it Darker.

"you'll get sick of always hearing Joy Division in the grocery store"

"the beatles have finally stopped being the Greatest Band of All Time"

What band replaced them?

Your computer.

The Velvet Sundown

What band replaced them?

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, October 12, 2026 11:32 AM (three minutes ago)

maybe it's more that people don't care as much as they used to about something like "The Greatest Band of All Time". idk.

"some asshole with a dallas cable public access show became one of the most important conservative voices in america for while"

“You’ll understand all those baseball jokes in that Simpsons episode”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2EgfkhC1eo

look i'll retract my statement if it'll make you shut the fuck up about the beatles, god

My Twitter feed is like 25% mouth-breathers arguing about dumb dogshit AI lists that "Rolling Stone" supposedly ran about the 50 Greatest Artists Who Unal*ved Themselves" or whatever bullshit and people engage with it like its real

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, October 12, 2026 12:10 PM (fifteen minutes ago)

this is ilm

ZIP disks will NOT be a thing for more than the next six months.
People will not only become ok with buying things over the internet, for many people it is the only way they'll buy things.
Oh also, this internet thing will end up being your career for the next 30+ years.
You will end up with stepkids.

(TBF I think I used zip disks til at least 2001 or so but I forget when they died)

People will pay more for vinyl records than any other form of recorded music.

NFTs, and the idea that people would (briefly) value them

odwalla is gone

Camilla Parker-Bowles will be Queen.

One of the most universally loved songs of the 1980s will be “Africa” by Toto.

tbh the biggest on i can think of is: there will be a global plague that will kill millions and shut down the entire world for years, billions will be spent to miraculously invent a safe vaccine in record time, but people wont want to take it bc they dont like being told what to do

Trump becoming President would have surprised me, but the idea of a fascist media star becoming President was out there in 30 years ago--in a famous 1996 novel that people get made fun of for having on their shelves---where Rush Limbaugh was the President.

30 years ago it had only been 7 years since the last time a fascist media star was president

One of the most listened to people on the planet is part of the main cast of Newsradio. No, not one of the ones people care about.

please zap me into the universe where Maura Tierney has the nation's #1 podcast

bill hicks sucks actually

in fact most of that "edgelord" stuff you like now is shitty

george carlin is still cool though

ok wait i don't want to confuse you, he's _dead_, absolutely, but he's a cool dead guy

there are comparatively few dead cis white guys who are still cool

no i'm not going to explain to you what "cis" means

oh also did i mention the fascist president was apparently, like, part of a secret cadre of rich and powerful pedophiles who went to a billionaire's private island to do Bad Things?

yeah i don't know it doesn't make sense to me either

well look it was either that or vote for a woman, so

yeah _now_ it makes sense, doesn't it?

oh also people use psychedelic drugs as antidepressants now, i'm taking cough syrup to try and manage my depression right now. people also do ketamine and mushrooms legally to treat depression

oh also did i mention the fascist president was apparently, like, part of a secret cadre of rich and powerful pedophiles who went to a billionaire's private island to do Bad Things?

You might have to tell your 1996 self that the Current US President was also part of the cadre.

Most major actors you can think of will have had a recurring role on a TV show.

And will be in an ad for online gambling.

You might have to tell your 1996 self that the Current US President was also part of the cadre.

― The Deer-Smellers of Haunted Mountain (President Keyes)

1996 me would absolutely have believed that

the fact that we'd be arguing about whether we should take a vaccine or a horse dewormer during a global pandemic that killed over a million Americans

People will pay more for vinyl records than any other form of recorded music.

― sarahell, Tuesday, October 13, 2026 12:09 AM (thirteen hours ago)

In 1996, a niche group of younger music fans buy used records because CDs are too expensive
In 2026, a niche group of younger music fans buy used CDs because records are too expensive

the weed outlets that looks like Verizon stores is something I could not see coming, back then headshops were still selling incense, tie-dye and Dark Side tapestries

In thirty years, the music section at Target will be a few racks of vinyl records with no CDs to be found.

That there would be twice as many "Smoke Shops" as gas stations in the town I live in.

That people would have stopped smoking things that made them look cool in favor of things that make them look like dorks.

That Borders bookstores would be a faint memory from 20 years ago.

back then headshops were still selling incense, tie-dye and Dark Side tapestries

it's not like these places don't still exist. and they still can't actually sell weed.

vape and weed shops definitely lack the seedy hippie vibe of yore

still got my Sneak-a-Toke

That there would be twice as many "Smoke Shops" as gas stations in the town I live in.

I went into one of these to inquire whether they sold pipe tobacco, and the guy behind the counter could not fathom what the fuck I was talking about, he brought me some Backwoods blunts or something

In thirty years, the music section at Target will be a few racks of vinyl records with no CDs to be found.

And a huge display of the 7" reinvented as a 4" Tiny Vinyl that cost more than a CD!

i'd ask when they're going to bring chocolate records, but third man has probably already done it

I heard The Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man" on Radio Two a while back. In fact the band did a Jo Whiley session in 2019.

If you had told me in 1996 that Radio Two would one day play The Pixies I would have said "no" and "what" and "no".

Other things I would have thrown shade at include (a) cannabis in tea (b) women fighting the wars (c) free ice-cream (d) entire world one bee-hive.

On a more serious level, Google Street View. Circa 1996 I would have been sceptical about the security implications, and also the fact that it would involve hiring cars to drive around periodically photographing things. That involves physical effort and expense in the real world - it's not something that can be solved by Moore's Law.

I would probably have envisaged a version of Street View that used 3D models combined with aerial texture maps, along the lines of Microsoft Flight Simulator. I would not have predicted that Google would be prepared to pay for people to drive around in cars, with 360 degree cameras.

future street views will be AI-generated predictions based on your zip code's Nextdoor posts

i still remember the first time i took a trip somewhere and and knew my way around the neighborhood i was staying in bc i had examined it earlier on streetview, it was a real vivid "this feels like the future" moment

The guy from Fear Factor and Newsradio will be a major force in the culture

in 1996 I might have grappled with 'influencers' in today's sense of the word.. but I guess we had 'tastemakers' back then

your parents really do suck and you should get away from them as soon as possible. wish i could help you bud but i'm from the future.

this is more of a local issue, but child me would be flummoxed by "it'll keep getting hotter for longer every summer in Texas, but for some reason everybody will want to shop at outdoor malls instead of indoor ones"

“Global warming is actually fully happening, and it’s even worse than predicted, but the main problem the US has is getting oil tankers through a strait without getting attacked by drones.”

xxp and there's an endcap of THC soda at the local Target

i’ve been worrying about climate change since 1988, so if you told me “summer in the Northeast now lasts from May to October, and you’ll have 80 degree days all the other months” i’d have believed you easily

uh it wasn't called 'climate change' back then, it was the 'greenhouse effect'

bob geldof would more than undo his live aid good work by inventing reality tv

Imagine watching the fifth season of The Real World in 1996 and being told that this entire experience is going to ultimately result in American facism

That Borders bookstores would be a faint memory from 20 years ago.

writing was on the wall when they outsourced their online presence to amazon in the late 90s

yes i still have dreams about when i worked there, it's not at all annoying

bob geldof would more than undo his live aid good work by inventing reality tv

Imagine watching the fifth season of The Real World in 1996 and being told that this entire experience is going to ultimately result in American facism

I remember being really into the early seasons of both TRW and Road Rules, when the "attractive people getting really drunk and yelling at each other" moments were just one ingredient in the stew; one whose recipe leaned heavy on lengthy scenes where cast members created art pieces based on the phone number for the Jerry Brown '92 presidential campaign, or rehearsed with their musical project, or highlighted the challenges faced by TRW-San Francisco's Pedro amidst an AIDS-panic landscape exemplified by the fuckheaditry of bible-thumping bigots like Dan Quayle and Rush Limbaugh. It was really cool to see seven strangers with dreams to be an artist, musician, writer, filmmaker, or political activist in close quarters with a shared project, thinking "What if this inspires people to be creative, or to want to make their slice of the world a better place?"

It still blows my mind that something with such an earnest and seemingly-positive agenda was so central to a major network of the monoculture. Sure, the shows kept going, but it was sad to watch that recipe get revised until the earnest ambition was gone.

And yeah, there's the fascist shitbags that it helped make popular.