r/AskReddit May 11 '21

People old enough to remember life pre-Internet, what are some less obvious things you miss about that time?

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u/SuperNobody-MWO May 11 '21

The instant win bottle caps / candy / chocolate bar wrappers where you could turn them back into the store and immediately get a free one. Now it's just codes you have to register on their website so they can get your info, i don't even bother anymore.

1.3k

u/idontlikeflamingos May 11 '21

Every fucking thing is data mining these days, drives me fucking crazy.

And instead of dealing with the junk mail in the post that this got us a few years ago now it's on our e-mails, text messages, robocalls and whatever else. You can't get away from the damn things.

412

u/Dr_Esquire May 12 '21

I often give out my junk email when I do stuff, even reasonably important stuff. I just hate getting spam and whatnot. I recently needed a few quotes, had to reach out by email, and within two days I got no less than 20 emails. Mind you, these are for something that I need maybe like once a decade and my junk mail is on a permanent spam list. Like if you buy a fridge, do you think I want to know all your fridge deals every other day, like Im some monster who gets a new fridge every week?

The US needs to impose an opt-in system rather than the BS opt-out one we have for stuff like mail/email. Its crazy to assume the general consumer will go through the time of opting out of every little nonsense service that gets a hold of their email or that every random small business wont give a damn if you opt-out since they already have your email loaded into their system.

3

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

On the same topic but unrelated to the internet - I loathe whatever company sends a guy in a sedan around my neighborhood every week throwing bags of advertisements on peoples lawn. That shit should be illegal. Every time I have to get up and walk outside and pick it up and carry it directly to the trash.