Having a killer message on your answering machine

🎶Believe it or not, George isn't at home! Please leave a message .. at the beep! I must be out, or I'd pick up the phone. Where could I be?! Believe it or not, I'm not home! 🎶

Literally held my answering machine up to the TV to record that as my message in the 90s. And I think I did it using a borrowed VHS copy of the episode that my friend recorded for TV.

I held mine up to the TV to record this as my message: [Homer Simpson D'oh! Compilation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLUho5wLLY)

In my freshman dorm (1995-96), one of the guys deliberately recorded his message with pauses to pretend like he was a real person answering: "Hello?" \*waits 3 seconds\* "This is he" \*waits 5 more seconds\* "Nah, I'm just playing with you, this is a voicemail, so please leave a message".

I'm all for pranks but this one always made me see red lol

There's a guy I call for work a lot who's answering machine starts with "This is ~" and then a long pause before "this is my voicemail, leave a message" and he actually answers the phone with the exact same phrase minus the voicemail warning. It's frustrating LOL

Holy balls That one's actually so dastardly, I think I might be ok with it. Have to respect the dedication to the bit

This means if he answers and then doesn't want to talk, he can plausibly just pretend to be the answering machine

For reference, watch "Archer", who is a master of the VM message

I had one of those in college on my cell phone back in 08-09.  I would go  “Hello….Helloooo?  Speak up I can barely hear you.  Haha just joking this is a message.  Leave one after the beep” Every single one of my voicemails started off with the person pissed off

My childhood best friend had this "Hello John speaking" "Oh hey, what's up?" "Ha, got you, leave a message" *beep* Except he would also answer the phone for real with "hello John speaking" "Oh hey, what's up"

My cellphone voicemail was similar in like 2008. "Hey what's up"..."Nothing much what are you doing?" "That's cool. I'm not here right now so if you can leave a message after the beep" everyone fell for it every single time.

My cousin had spiderweb playing on hers snd then she said “i have NO DOUBT you’ll call me back” Damn Emily - I was so jealous I didn’t think of that first

As a lifelong No Doubt fan, I applaud this 

This is a good one. Everyone’s cell phone is just “please leave your message for (phone number) after the tone” from the automated thing from your phone. It used to be fun to make your own. You still can but that’s dangerous for scammers.

I will always remember my first fun answering machine message. *with thick inspector Clouseau accent*; "Hello. This is Inspector Cluephone. Leave your name and number at the beep. And what I want to know is, you've decided to call now... why?"

Making plans with someone numerous days in ahead, without talking to them about it again, and just showing up without needing to clarify that day that your plans are still on.

Plus "rally points" for where to meet up in case you got separated.

Yep! The mistake of not planning for that only happens once.

The first music festival I went to I lost my mate in the mosh mid afternoon and never found him again that day as we never made a meet up place

I miss those days.

Yeah I think this skill was sadly lost - now when I make plans and If I don't text everyone again before the event and on the day of it's like a 90% chance they will no show.

Which is ironic, really, with so many new ways to be notified with reminders

You know, you're spot on. I still just go ahead to where we talked to, but I do most times get a message confirming. Why is that? The only time I confirm is with a friend that has her doorbell broken, so I have to call or write to her: "I'm here!"

Tae bo. People may still do it but it’s not advertised anymore and the best part is most of the popular videos are free on YouTube now. Tae bo kicks for kids is even on there.

Maybe go to my place and just kick it like tae Bo

And possibly bend you over? Look back and watch me.... Forgot all about that song, but immediately went there reading OP's post lol

In high school, our PE teacher was out one day and left the Tae Bo tape with the sub with instructions to note the last 5, 3, and 1 standing. Most kids figured out it didn't matter enough to try. I'm hyper competitive and ended up in a show-down with another girl who was a hard-core gymnast (I played tennis and worked out at the gym a lot). When the bell rang for end of period, we were still going. We looked at each other and had the most fun high-five and hug. Endorphins are a helluva drug.

What's Billy Blanks up to now? Is he still in it?

He led a Tae Bo class at Lifetime Fitness in suburban Minneapolis on New Year's Day a few years ago. Place was packed for it.

My mom was anorexic and would work out to this for hours on end 

I feel like this was a lot of moms in the 90’s.

frosted tips

It's gonna make a comeback. Mark my words. If the mullet can come back, so will frosted tips.

The return of the mullet convinced me all bets are off. Anything is possible. The laws of nature no longer apply.

I won't say mullets have ever looked good on anyone, but on a select few they look *right*.

Yeah, you can’t just have a mullet. You have to wear it, you cant choose mullet, it chooses you.

Cauliflower hair, here we come.

Bro I saw kids wearing Jnco Jeans yesterday the late 90s are coming back in full swing.

Next three years we will have frosted tipped ramen hair. The maniacs brought back bucket hats, this is the next step.

Bucket hats never fully left.

Unless you’re the Mayor of Flavortown!

Fierri has said he hates the look and wishes he hadn't made it such a big part of his brand. Funny enough, Bob Ross was the same with his fro after a few years of it.

They’re going to be coming back. Everything terrible from the 90s is creeping back in. Look at the ultra baggy pants, the fucked up mullet guys are wearing now. They’re crossing all kinds of different parts of the 90s and mashing them together but it’s happening.

As a former sagger and wear’er of baggy clothes, I cannot believe it’s coming back. If I see tall tee’s I’m gonna lose it lol

Saying "Not!"

Psych!

That's cool. NOT!

Duh!

Psych has been back! Except the kids spell it “sike”

Borat was the peak of “not” humor

NAAAHHHT

Thisdressisblacknot

Hypercolour Tshirts

I wish I knew what happened to mine. I had the purple that turned to pink.

Pogs

Not just any Pogs, Alf Pogs! Remember Alf? Well he's back... in Pog form!

YOU TRADED MY SOUL FOR POGS?! Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Best episode.

I prefer Marge vs The Monorail but Bart’s Soul is also definitely S-tier

I wish I still had my slammers. One had a manufacturing error where it was off-balance with most of the weight on one side and it absolutely wrecked. I played fair most of the time but, if you were an asshole, I'm pulling out this monster. We also didn't play for keeps "per se". The winner would get their pick of one POG from the loser but also give one of their choosing back, so everyone left with the same number they started at - it was just a trade-off of coolness.

Meeting someone at their gate when the plane lands. Can't do that anymore.

I loved doing that. It was so special.

First time I flew I was 11 years old and alone. Even had a lay over. My aunt and uncle walked me to the gate in their state and my parents picked me up at the gate in ours. Literally zero questions about a kid flying alone, hostesses kept a small eye on me when I got on the plan to help out, and then when I had a small layover in another city. Shit would never happen today.

Rat tails

In Australia they’ve come back. I see more rat tails out in public now than I ever did in the 90s. I didn’t think they were cool then and even less so now.

Short sleeve t-shirt over a long sleeve t-shirt.

Short skirt and a long jacket

Cake is a great band. Shout-out to Sacramento!

That music video is a time capsule.

At Citibank we will meet accidently. We'll start to talk when she borrows my pen.

The grunge scene rocked. Plaid shirt wrapped around the waist, long shorts (ideally cargo and bonus points for a chain or 2 looped around somewhere), with the Doc Martins. As a Gen X, I am proud of the 90's. We had the music, the long hair, a bit of harmless technology in the form of dumb mobile phones and some new thing called the internet which meant you could sort of play games with friends... good times man.

I still rock this under my hoodie. It's cold and rainy where I live.

Fuck I still do this, and I’m doing this right now. I’m 39.

[удалено]

It's weird hearing about "The Will Smith effect" again while watching retrospectives on old movies. Like the scene from I, Robot with the warehouse of androids was supposed to be much smaller until Smith showed up and producers dumped trucks of money on production.

He had a run of terrible movies in recent years, but Will Smith was the biggest movie star on the planet for years. He was Mr. Blockbuster movie. Just his name attached to the project made it a major project now.

People used to say action heros were white guys, or Will Smith. He really had an impact in the culture.

Saw a standup from Marlon Wayans shortly after the slap and I think he said it best. White people saved the world all the time, but never a black man. They could save the neighborhood or the city, but NEVER the world but Will Smith was the only one that was able to do it. He had a tremendous impact on the culture and media in general. Here’s a [link](https://youtu.be/gM_pl9ykNqg?si=41nzupvSVHz6ylud) to him talking about it.

"Welcome to Earth"

biggest is maybe a stretch but from 1995 to i would say 2004 he was probably in the top 5 male actors with others like Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Dicaprio and Brad Pitt. Difficult to choose with so many actors and great movies they made. From my perspective and memory, Tom Hanks was the biggest star of the 90s.

Crazy cuz at this point he’s poison after trying to shoehorn his talentless kids into everything and defending a bald headed psycho 

He was still cool way up to the 10s

In the 1990s, having a pager meant that you were important and connected. Now that everyone has smartphones, pagers are no longer needed. I can still remember those days.

Having a pager meant you were a business executive, a first responder, or you sold drugs. Sometimes all three. All important.

I’m a doctor, still have a pager

Pagers get reception where phones won't.

Yep. They switched over to a pager app on phones at one of the places where I work which just means that if something happens to your phone (no reception, dead, lost, accidentally on airplane mode) you become unreachable. Makes me very nervous. I’ve had more than one issue with someone I need to get in touch with just never get back to me on call; every time it’s been a phone issue and the person was mortified.

Or you were a man with a pregnant wife/girlfriend/partner, and you needed to be contacted quickly that it is time to take her to the hospital

That must have been annoying in between all the drug sales

55-jimbo

Well, at least it still means that you sell drugs. Still important.

Can’t remember where I learned this, but pagers are still used in hospitals because they’re not prone to the connection issues of cell phones or radios.

My wife is a doctor and they just stopped using pagers last year in exchange for special mobile hospital phones. The reason pagers are used is because they work on a lower frequency that can penetrate floors and walls easily.

In the later 90s, pagers became very popular. Anyone who had a decent social life or wanted to pretend that they did had a pager.

Harvey Weinstein: the press loved how he was reviving the film industry in New York. The public only knew he produced good movies.

It’s crazy cuz he was essentially doing what lots of Hollywood executives have been doing since the beginning of the industry and it still happens because everyone who wants to be in the industry shuts their mouth because it’s a private industry so speaking up will rid the business of one problem but leave you unemployable. 

I remember Family Guy did a gag in either season 1 or season 2 where Walt Disney was basically Harvey Weinsteining Minnie Mouse. "You want to be a star? Now take it off." This was in 1999 or 2000.

Yeah Seth McFarland has been making dark jokes about the Weinstein situation way before the public at large knew.  They let him at the Oscars give the Award for best supporting actress...  And you can guess what joke he would make. https://youtu.be/9dUd_V5REUk?si=rolNXPUbk90Cu18y

Yeah, if Weinstein's name was attached, you knew it was going to be a good movie. If only we knew.

You can say that about Vince McMahon now in the sports entertainment world. Dude was credited for revolutionizing and bringing wrestling main stream and into a light its never been. There was always rumblings about him, but now that people are coming forward more and more its just absolutely horrific. And to hear all those involved or covering it up.

The see-through landline phone that showed the colorful wiring. I wanted one of those in my room so bad.

Dial up internet

Internet in general; especially during the last couple of years of the '90s.

There was a video game website that I went to when I was a kid that is still around to this day, that's semi regularly updated. [The Mushroom Kingdom](http://themushroomkingdom.net). First launched in 1997, and it looks exactly the same as it did then.

ICQ

Remember “a/s/l”. Kinda shocked whole thing didn’t end poorly 

Uh-oh!

This sound is the sound our work time clock makes when the punch didn’t register. I wish I was kidding

Still have that sound for notifications on my phone. Annoying as fuck, but I like to see people 30+ looking around when they hear it, lol

I somehow still remember my ID number.

Me too: 22312557

Malls

I went to the mall around the holidays, man it was tragic. I remembered all the fun I used to have at the mall in the 90s and now they are barren wastelands.

Saying “whassuuuuup!”

WASSSAAAAAAAAAA

WASSAAAA

Clearly Canadian

I still find those every once in a while. I actually bought one not long ago to relive the past. Not as good as I remembered. Lol

Wearing overalls with one strap over your shoulder. Or none.

No that has been in. I’ve been doing it since 2019

Pagers. Over-plucking eyebrows until they practically no longer exist.

I got married in 1998 and my eyebrows in my wedding photos are my second biggest regret that day.

My teenage son said “I can always tell who were cool chicks in the 90s, because now they don’t have any eyebrows.” He’s not wrong. 😑

So insightful, yet such a burn.

Heroin chic body type as a trend

it’s coming back into style among the teens right now unfortunately

Ugh it’s so awful to use bodies as an accessory for the revolving door of trends. It’s a one way ticket to failure. Thanks fashion industry, ya dickhead.

in my personal opinion i think these newer to the market weight loss drugs like ozempic are making celebrities skinnier and kids see it and idolize it

EA believe it or not lol

It’s in the game!

Challenge everything

As a kid, our family had a Apple IIe compatible clone. One of my favourite games was SkyFox. It's kind of amazing how many IPs are owned by EA and they are doing nothing with. Also Wing Commander. FU EA!

Aliens. They are still kind of cool, but I don't think anyone who didn't live through the 90s could possible wrap their heads around how absolutely mainstream X-files was, and any movie with aliens was pretty much guaranteed to make money.

I'll always remember that autopsy they put on like it was real. My parents just let us believe it was real, and done by the government. Was in my 20s before it occurred to me it might not be real.

AOL?

Being a fan of Bill Cosby

I've said it before, but it's hard to overstate how disappointing his downfall was to a lot of black Americans. Aside from the Cosby Show being insanely popular, he and the show used to serve as an example that black people could be just as successful as anyone else without giving up their culture.

Absolutely. He was a household favourite to millions for decades. It must have been such a kick in the balls for so many people who grew up idolising him There was a similar reaction here when the historic crimes of Jimmy Saville were made public. Sir Jimmy Saville actually. The dirty bastard was knighted. He was a household name, often seen with royalty and Prime Ministers and raised millions for charity. Shame the disgusting nonce died and never had to answer for his crimes

Privacy.

Smoking indoors Even in non smoking households it was expected that there's an ashtray on the table when guests come over.

It's great. When I was a child EVERYTHING smelled vaguely like cigarettes. McDonald's had a smoking section. People smoked in their cars and in their houses. In airports. Just everywhere. Now if anyone is smoking inside, it's candy scented vapor that doesn't linger.

Yeah remember those little aluminum ashtrays McDonald's had?

And the cocaine spoons - sorry the coffee stirrer spoons.

Vape lingers. My husband vapes, and now my whole life smells like a shitty vanilla candle.

The smoking & non smoking sections in restaurants was pretty laughable.

Here’s a 2ft glass panel on-top of a half wall leaving a 20foot gap to the ceiling. Surly that’ll keep the smoke in this section!

For some reason, mushroom haircuts. Although I guess now we have broccoli hair. I'll never understand the appeal of either hairstyle.

I got that haircut and my friends all called me dickhead.

My nephew's grandmother called it a penis haircut to his face.

I was always referred as “peckerhead.”

Surprises. Nowadays everything is ruined just by movie and game trailers that reveal the entire plot, important scenes shown and talked about, over excessive amounts of detail online, nonstop spoilers posted.... The whole surprise and mystery aspect used to be great, but that's unfortunately not the case anymore.

Long phone conversations with friends and family, like every day or two.

Mmmmmbop, ba duba dop Ba du bop, ba duba dop Ba du bop, ba duba dop Ba du, oh yeah

Pretty much the whole Matrix-cool aesthetic. Leather, wrap around shades, buckles on everything. Think, "Blade" or "Underworld".

Ska

I'm like "what do you mean? I just bought a Ska cd" Then I remember that was in 2009..

We’re do for another wave any summer now. I can’t wait! 

reebok pumps

They're back actually, I just bought my kids a pair last year to obviously for my childhood dream of having a pair myself :)

90's kids. except they actually are cool af, but kids these days don't understand the cool cuz we out here doing big boy shit.

[These fucking jeans.](https://jnco.com/products/convict-50-dark-stone?variant=31717022302251&tw_source=google&tw_adid=447476954837&tw_campaign=10511817545&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiArLyuBhA7EiwA-qo80PhY-4vx5cdq_lguPeJ101Eo8ZhXv0quY6IWjs23i9J8Lr0uTmQRaBoC0gEQAvD_BwE) To be fair, I thought they looked stupid when I saw my friends wearing them in the 90's, but they were surprisingly popular.

Unfortunately these baggy ass jeans are back in style. It’s pretty funny seeing kids wearing these now. I ask myself…. Did I look that stupid wearing those? The answer is yes. Yes I did.

Those jeans are obviously way overboard but I’m glad that more relaxed fits are back in style rather than the super slim fit clothing of the 2010’s.

Tamagotchi/Giga Pets/Nanos, Yakbaks, the Chicago Bulls.

Man I never liked basketball but I once got a Chicago Bulls branded basketball and thought it was the coolest thing ever

Hey now! Some of us Chicagoans still love the Bulls!

Zima

Single strapping your backpack

Playing outside

Knowing how to read a map.

Lisa Frank school supplies

Z-Caverrici. Holy hell those pants were just awful, worse than the mid 90's Jnco's. Think AC Slater pants.

Smoking. Everyone smoked back then and the ones that didn’t never complained

We complained. Our parents just smacked us and said, "Quit being so gay."

That FBI : Female Body Inspector shirt everyone’s dad wore

Clove cigs

Answering the phone without knowing who it is, more 80s than 90s but it still applied.

Columbia House/BMG

The internet. It's ubiquitous and we use it for everything all the time. But in the 90s, the internet was *cool*. And it was the Internet with a capital I. At least in my English class.

Talking on the landline phone for hours

I'd like to say me but it would be a lie; I wasn't cool then either.

The internet. It's just a toxic cesspool full of cringe, hate, ads and abject stupidity.

Not to mention personal opinions being the basis of social logic.

“Hello?…helloooo?…ha-ha just joking with ya! Leave a message after the beep.”

The planet

Me I was da bomb, home skillet

College hazing

Vet here. Or just straight up military-style hazing.

Hazing has just evolved. It’s not just torturing pledges. It’s making them do silly things to see if they have a sense of humor. 

admitting you were wrong and just simply moving on... .

Dial up, baggy pants, pens and pencils, computers WERE cool, staying up all night and running the neighborhood with zero parental supervision

Human interaction

WDYM? Everything from the 90s is still spectacular!

The ‘running man’ dance and actually busting moves on a dance floor. Back then there were dance offs, sort of a hangover from the 80s breakdance days.

Butterfly hair clips

Heavy metal and rock music. Some might consider it to still be cool, but it's nowhere near as popular as it once was. Which is a travesty.

Chain belts... Belly bands..... Bell-bottoms jeans ( even though I still like them) my kids say it's a no

My teenager loves bell bottoms if you call them "flares".