"Hark, Alfred, the smith's apprentice, was taken by the plague - find your goodfellows and see if any of their sons of the working age would wish gainful employment to a kind master."
Nobody referred to videos as "VHS" unless they were explicitly trying to distinguish the medium from betamax. They just called them "videos" and "tapes" or "videotape."
2004 is when the Blockbuster video rental chain was at its peak (cite), and VHS was still in wide use at the time having only been surpassed by DVD rentals a year earlier. Speed dial was also still a thing then, payphones still exist today, and, although complaints were filed against Bill Cosby much earlier the public wasn't widely aware of them until 2014.
How about "John Kerry is the candidate who can prevent a second Bush term" ?
I’ve enjoyed my time talking with you and getting to understand how you see the world and, although I don’t agree with you, I’m glad to have had this exchange of opinions and will now reflect upon what I’ve learned.
"99 cents for a song? Hell yeah. I'm never buying CDs again." (A reference to the iTunes Music Store launch)
"I ran out of free AOL time. Better get another demo disc"
Speaking of AOL, "yo, what's your AIM screenname?" (Replace "AIM" with your favorite messaging service at the time if you used that)
"Mom, can I have a PlayStation 2?
-No.
-But it plays DVDs."
"Oh, I can't wait to see the wonderful New York Twin Towers, I'm so excited for what's coming!" (I was too young to even remember the concept of different countries existing so I had no idea what "America" even was, let alone being confused about 9/11)
"I got slimed. It was so. Much. Fun."
"I'm so glad the United Kingdom won Eurovision, I can't wait to see how the next year's contest will turn out. Katrina was so amazing" (1997 was the last time the UK won)
"What a wonderful Saturday morning. Time to watch some cartoons."
"My phone has a NiCd battery, and it's almost out of juice so I can't just plug it in because I will ruin the battery. I have to wait until it literally turns off."
"Belgrade is the capital of Yugoslavia"
"Finally got my fresh new copy of Mac OS X. Time to see what's it's like." proceeds to stay on OS 9 for a few more years
Hey, I live down the steeet from the best remaining video rental store (Movie Madness in Portland, OR). Have run down to return videos pretty often this year!
Being a little literal, but I can guarantee someone has said 1, 3, 5, and 7 in the past twenty years. Heck, probably the last year.
Payphones are still a thing in some places and get used - I started doing a thing involving them a yearish ago (it's in my post history if anyone really cares). Literally had someone ask "Hey, are you done with that phone?" as I was jotting down its number, which was shocking. Can confirm where I am they still take coins (it's 50 cents now, unless you're calling a toll-free number).
VHS is making a ... come back isn't really the right word, but there's a small number of folks interested in what's on old tapes they find and some hobbyists swap stuff. And there are still a few video rental places around (though really, really rare - or near places like campsites, catering to folks with cars that still have DVD players or households with spotty internet).
It's all still disappearing, no doubt, but not 100% dead yet.
I vividly remember... I was in the office and one of my coworkers comes up to me with a shit eating grin on his face - like he had something he wanted to share...
He said, "Have you ever heard of Bitcoin?"
I said, "No..."
He explained (sort of) what he thought it was, but sounded more like an investment opportunity (blah blah blah) less than 10 cents per... I didn't bite.
You say that, although it's pretty close to the recurring joke in American Psycho, so if you're lenient this kind of sentence was said in this comm only days ago. https://lemmy.ml/post/24140732/15784014
20 years ago it would have been DVDs. But even before that, we didn't call them "VHS"es. We called them tapes, or video tapes if we wanted to distinguish from audio tapes.
Can you turn the antenna to ___ insert satellite name ___ ?
For context
where I grew up, almost every immigrant houshold had a satellite antenna, to watch channels across the world. Since my parents were immigrants, we had to turn the antenna each time we wanted to watch either local news or news from our country of origin.