“Sorry, I got to return this video”

“Mike? I love that guy, I got him on speed dial”

“Do you have any quarters for a phone?”

“Bill Cosby really is America’s dad”

“Can I borrow that VHS?”

“Sorry, I can’t come. My favourite show is on”

“Do you know where a phone is?”

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
    23·
    5 days ago

    “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.”

  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
    442·
    6 days ago

    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.”

    for example: Hey can I borrow that tape?

    That movie just came out on video.

    Be kind, rewind your videotape.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      I was born in the late 80’s by the time Betamax had died out so VHS was the de facto only video tape format in wide use, Hi-8 existed but was only used in the airlines despite being smaller and better. So movie previews would talk about “Coming soon to own on video” or people would say “I’ve got it on tape.” It would feel weirdly early 80’s to specify…until late in the DVD era and into blu-ray when VHS was a truly dead format and people started calling it that again.

      Similarly, I never heard anyone pronounce “SNES” as a one letter word until at least the Gamecube era; it was the Super Nintendo at the time.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        5 days ago

        I was growing up when the SNES came out. I was a rare person that had an NES and I knew of no one with both an NES and SNES so most people I knew called the SNES “Nintendo”.

        After the game cube was absolutely when “S’ness” became popular.

    • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 days ago

      Conversely, I still sometimes refer to DVDs, Blu Rays and even streaming media as “videos”.

      Which is both anachronistic, but also technically correct.

    • deegeese
      25·
      6 days ago

      I ironically said that when I was working for IBM.

      They don’t actually fire, they do “performance improvement plans”.

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlEnglish
    20·
    5 days ago

    “Sorry, I got to return this video”

    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'm_All_NEET:3@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      10·
      5 days ago

      It’s weird how slow things really are. In 2006 you could have rented a VHS from blockbuster and gone home and upload it to YouTube.

      • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
        3·
        5 days ago

        I moved out on my own that year and only had cable Internet and a cell phone. Facebook was still edu only, myspace was still popular as hell, you could get DVDs through the mail from Netflix, movie piracy was extremely popular.

    • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
      3·
      5 days ago

      Yeah I got my first mobile phone in 2004 and it was one of the Nokia’s, 3310 probably. We definitely still had a landline with speed dial and absolutely did not have streaming. Definitely still had VHS, probably got our first DVD player the year before but still used both.