9 Reasons It’s Better To Be A College Freshman Now Than It Was In 1998.
School is back in session, everyone. How was your summer? Ten years ago this week, I was a teenager entering my first semester as a college freshman. Here are 9 reasons why this year’s college freshman have it a lot better than I did back in 1998.
1. It was almost impossible to stalk people.
Some chick in your lecture hall is hot? Now you can just hop Online and see all of her naughty Halloween photos from last year on Facebook. You can also take part in the newfangled fad of telling everyone in the universe what you’re doing RIGHT NOW. Hiding in the bushes outside of someone’s dorm window is so ’90s.
2. We had to go to the library.
Don’t cry to me because your T.A. won’t let you use Wikipedia as a source for your paper. Only six nerdy eighth graders knew how to use Google in 1998. I think I used Alta Vista. Ewww. The rest of the time I had to get an actual book from the actual library for whatever bullshit my rhetoric teacher wanted me to write about. Double ewww.
3. I had to memorize people’s phone numbers.
A cell phone? In 1998? What was I - a millionaire? No. We used to have to check our answering machines when we got home from class. If you would have told me a cell phone could check email and go to websites the way they can now, my primitive ’90’s brain would have exploded. In the olden times, people memorized each other’s phone numbers.
4. We had to watch scripted television programs.
I guess we had The Real World: Seattle or whatever, but for the most part it was just laugh tracks and horrible premises about neighbors and dating. Now we watch people pick their husbands and wives on cattle-call reality shows, or send text messages to vote for who the next big pop star should be. Or watch old hasbeens try to lose weight. Or watch a bunch of rich kids in L.A. do nothing for 30 minutes. We had it so rough, man.
5. We had to buy CDs.
No iPods, no iTunes, nothing that started with a lower case i. Not even Napster. Times were real hard. And that Green Day “Time of Your Life” song was always on. And not even ironically.
6. We were caught up in home run fever.
Didn’t McGwire and Sosa have 40 home runs by the fourth game of the season that year? And we had no idea that they were all taking injections of horse tranquilizers and gorilla semen. As I’m writing this, it’s August and the guy who has the most home runs in the majors is Carlos Quentin with 35. The balls were juiced. We didn’t care. Plus, we had to watch the Yankees win the World Series. Groaner.
7. We wasted our time looking forward to the Star Wars prequels.
We’d have to wait an entire year before our childhood hopes and dreams were murdered by George Lucas, while Jar Jar Binks shat on their corpse. We didn’t know any better.
8. We were scared of getting terrorized… by white people.
Remember when it was white people that were batshit crazy with bombs and whatnot? And I’m not talking about the President. What are those people doing now? Al Qaeda totally stole their thunder.
9. We had no way to anonymously tell people they sucked.
Not unless drawing dicks on people’s dry erase boards outside their dorm rooms counts.
Ah, the good ol’ days.
Comedy.com’s ListMaster is Mike Bridenstine. He probably forgot some things.
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Tags: best of august 08, college, comedy, lists, movies
August 20th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
ROFL
Awesome!
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:31 am
[...] It’s way better to be a freshman now than 10 years ago - [The Comedy Feed] [...]
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:04 am
How about us from 1978:
1) We had photo albums, and our computers used punch cards
2) We went to the library but think about what’s in books that are over 30 yrs old.
3) Our dorm room shared a phone in the hall
4) We had a common room on the ground floor to watch tv.. by the way.. who shot JR ?
5) We were buying LP’s ( and recording our friends music on cassette tapes )
6) Roughly the last time the Pgh Pirates had a winning season
7) We were still watching the original Star Wars (along with Rocky Horror and Kentucky Fried Movie)
9) We had to tell people they sucked in person.
Perspective is everything I guess
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:14 am
Ehh…not really that funny.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:15 am
I just had my ten year HS reunion and we actually mentioned a lot of this stuff. I couldn’t even IMAGINE having access to wikipedia/google scholar. Library? What effing library?
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:30 am
And this list doesn’t even mention how girls would be way hotter and sluttier now than back then! Thongs, shaved hoo-has, desensitized by porno, thinking it’s chic to be bi-curious. Man, I missed out.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:54 am
Too true, most campuses didn’t even have the Internet until 2000 or so.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 am
Great stuff. I look back now and can’t believe I went to college without Wikipedia.
But here’s one thing we had in 1998, or at least 1999, that college students don’t have now…..Napster. The glory days of non-virus infected, non-this might get your ass hauled to court by the music industry, downloading of free music. Sigh.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:54 am
Ahhh, the glory days…back then it was a matter of pride to have the biggest CD collection! And if I recall correctly, my computer was considered “fast” with a whopping 225 mhz processor.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:31 am
“Most campuses didn’t even have the Internet until 2000 or so.” Where did you go to school? I’d guess that 95% of high schools had the Internet in 2000.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I was laughing out loud in my office, well done, i especially liked the “my primitive 90’s brain” good to see the Bridenstine’s still got it
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Hmmm… I started college in 1998 and you’re a bit off. A lot of people I knew had cell phones and they weren’t super expensive. While we didn’t have the fastest computers we did have high speed internet in the dorms. I don’t know anybody who had a freaking answering machine, we all had voicemail. Seriously, where the hell did you go to college? p.s. I have to agree with the Napster comment! Back then you just downloaded every song and porno movie that was out there on the network. No viruses or Feds trying to cock block you. The biggest thing on my campus back then though was AOL’s Instant Messanger. Getting a screen name from a hottie was all that mattered.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
that’s fuckin stupid!
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I agree that we all had cell phones at that time. They were the ugly, huge Nokias with obnoxious ringtones and pull-up antennas, but we had them. And Napster was awesome! We had high speed internet and routers in each room, stalked people through classmates.com, and had voicemail. Although my northern school was really up to date on the technology, so I guess it depends on where you went.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 pm
“And this list doesn’t even mention how girls would be way hotter and sluttier now than back then! Thongs, shaved hoo-has, desensitized by porno, thinking it’s chic to be bi-curious. Man, I missed out.”
Most of that could actually be found on a college campus in the late 90’s. Sorry to burst your bubble, but things, bi-curious college girls, and shave pubic areas didn’t just come into being in the last couple of years.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 pm
unfunny
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:39 pm
again, i just want to reiterate how stupid this is. god i hope you spent a million dollars on getting this url. die die die.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Judson Morris, your comic sans font on your pxl.net web page is funnier than any of this.
Morris, Judson judd@pxl.net
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
thats awesome, !
August 25th, 2008 at 10:08 am
mcveigh was the man
August 25th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Whoa, what’s with all the violent hatred in the comments?!?!?
August 25th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Depending on where you went to college, the internet, cell phones, sluttier girls didn’t show up ’til later. I know this for a fact because I went to one of those colleges.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Pure comedic genius.
redbarradio.com
August 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
This is a stupid list. It was only ten years ago. People did have cell phones in 1998. Yes they may have only been able to store 25 contacts but it wasn’t the 1970’s for Christ sake. I am also pretty sure we had the internet machine back then, yup we may have not been looking up material for school papers, we were more interested in see vast quantities of vagina!!!!!! And I beat off very well to all the girls on friends, ok and some of the guys too. Fukc Myspace, Fukc Titanic, Fukc Mark and Sam’s cheating asis, All white people scare me, and Lucas rules, I’m out.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:15 am
this is the sheeeoooott!
August 28th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
You went to school back when MTV actually had music videos…lol
Technology def has revolutionized the way college students interact. It makes everything from social life to researching, to any aspect of college life easier.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:49 am
shut the fuck up no one gives a fuck if you had it harder in 1998 than people do now.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Pretty funny. I was also a college freshman in ‘98.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
This only makes me laugh because the internet was for sure around and was used more often for school than for anything else.
But by far the best was “8. We were scared of getting terrorized… by white people.” because college freshman aren’t scared of oh say….Virginia Tech 2.0?
“7. We wasted our time looking forward to the Star Wars prequels.” Harry potter?
“6. We were caught up in home run fever.” Michael Phelps?
But then you missed the important things. Like amazon and half.com selling students used textbooks. Or the fact that you actually had to play the guitar to be a guitar hero in 1998. OR….WIRELESS INTERNET!? Text messaging so you can talk to people while in class.
September 9th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Oh man. The utterly sad part is that all of those things were definitely better in 1998 than they are now. Especially the one about tv.
September 12th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Makes me proud to be a freshman :]
September 16th, 2008 at 12:10 am
I dig Tony’s list from 1978. Although, I kinda disagree with the impossible to stalk people. I did plenty of stalking back in the mid 90’s before my priso…err…wait.