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Let me take you for a trip down Memory Lane, back to a time in the not so distant past when things were no doubt a little bit easier for all of us.
If you’re of a certain age (I’m talking mid to late 20s here), you probably remember the year 2010 fondly. I was a freshman in college, attending all of my classes and taking diligent notes during the first few days week, then bonging Busch Lights and smoking Parliaments with my friends Thursday through Saturday.
I didn’t have a care in the world other than occasionally studying for a pesky Biology 140 course that insisted on quizzes every single week of the semester. I wore sweatpants to class most of the time, saving the good stuff for photo opportunities at house parties and inside dorm rooms.
I’m hoping that most of you reading this remember just how important a “going-out outfit” was during this period of time. This isn’t to say that having outfits ready to go for bars and parties isn’t important now, but from 2010-2012, it was doubly important because of Facebook. You didn’t want to be getting tagged in pictures with the same clothes on every weekend.
Facebook was still a popular website for people our age, a place not yet inundated by posts from bored housewives and political groups looking to gain ground.
In 2010, Facebook still belonged to the kids. Camera phones were not yet at a place where they were worthy of posting online.
I still had a flip phone and was an absolute animal on t9 word. A few of the lucky ones had Blackberry’s and occasionally you’d see a picture pop up onto the feed with that luxurious phrase – “Uploaded to Facebook via Blackberry.”
Those were few and far between – pictures mostly came from girls you would meet out at said house parties. You’d friend them on Facebook a day or so after meeting them and then maybe you’d get tagged in some sweet pics from the weekend prior. You know the camera I’m talking about. Most looked like this:
Try not to stare too long at that guy’s fingernails in the picture. Absolutely disgusting.
Now I won’t lie to you – I did a lot of Facebook stalking back in the day. The week after college spring break ended was like Christmas day for yours truly with all of the uploaded bikini albums. It was a wild time to be on Facebook.
It’s just funny when you think that all of those photos you got tagged in – the ones in Panama City or standing next to a keg on a porch for a tailgate at 10:00 a.m. – were taken with a fucking digital camera. That is wild. We had phones but we kept them in our pockets for the most part.
The digital camera was king and every. single. girl. at every. single. party. had one chilling in her purse. For a man in college, if you got tagged in 20 pictures on a Sunday afternoon you had a big weekend. Chances are you were talking to A LOT of girls. Or, you got really drunk on a Friday night and kept bugging some girl to take candid shots of you cradling a fifth of Admiral Nelson like a baby.
I look back on those days fondly. The Facebook album was king, the cell phone didn’t hold as much power as it does now, and getting tagged in photos from the weekend was a good way to fill in the areas that you couldn’t quite remember. .
Respond
jduda@grandex.co
Back when every semester of college required its own Facebook album for pictures.
With titles that were either a popular song for a majority of the semester or “~SpRiNg SpRaNg SpRuNg~”
“Hell on Heels”
“Round three”
“College lifeee ♥”
Had to do a cleanse of some of those photos recently…
I went on a 3 day work trip to Chicago a couple years ago and my coworker brought his digital camera and took no less than 500 pictures. It was wild. He was also 27 and not a photographer
Shout out to disposable camera users
Most phones still suck at night shots and zooming so I still bring my digital camera if I’m going somewhere where I’ll be shooting pics at night or at distances or both.
Kinda sounds like something a CIA agent would say.
Digital camera is moreso linked to “New Profile Pics” announcement via MySpace In my mind
I’m sort of surprised you’re not trying to bring the digital camera back.
now that camera phone me have come so far, we need to look sharp even more often because it could be a very casual event and landing on someone’s IG story is still likely
What?
We used disposable Kodak cameras at our parties instead of digital cameras. Still got a stack of a couple hundred and they are great to look at
It definitely blew my mind realizing that I was born in 1993 and kids my age and younger (maybe from 93 to early 2000’s?) were the last to have their baby pictures taken on cameras…whether digital, disposable, whatever. It’s all on phones now.
PGP.
My boyfriends grandma broke out a coolpix two weeks ago. I accidentally said “it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those.” Grandma was not pleased.
T9 word is a lost language, future archaeologists will look at it as the Latin of our time
same…maybe because I’m in my 30s and not mid-late 20s. Facebook wasn’t even out my first few years of college (thank god)