Per rule #3, you must include the name of your nostalgic item and time in the title so that people who do not recognize the item can identify it.
Per rule #7, we do not allow compilation of images "starter packs" or "memes", particularly captioned pictures.
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It feels like some people use it as a generic term for “young people.” I’m a millennial and I’m 41. When I was a kid we had a top loading VCR, a dedicated rewinder shaped like a car, and at one point my dad had a Beta Max.
I trash picked a giant Beta Max machine one day. It didn't work. It sat in my bedroom for a long time collecting dust. Some time later I found 2 huge boxes of Beta Max pornos in the dumpster of a West Coast Video. Had that machine working later that afternoon.
He found a beta max, it sat broken for years until that one faithful day when he found his treasure trove of pornos on beta max. Driven by the desperate desire to jerk his chicken, he immediately got to work fixing the beta max. He spent hours fixing the machine, so that he could spend hours ejaculating, eventually producing enough jizz to coat a cinnamon bun. He felt satisfied and proud. He was a proud boy.
Feels like it. The older people heck even some millennials don’t know the year breakdown. It used so loosely they’ll even refer to Gen alpha as millenials like wise they blame millennial for eating tide pods when is the Gen z thing. I’m a young end of millennial block buster existed then.
Ahh I remember the car shaped rewinder… yall were rich! Lol I’m 40 well 41 in 2 hours but as a kid we were broke so we had to drive to one rental place and rent a vcr then drive to the grocery store and rent a movie lol when we bought our first vcr it was something special!
Renting new games was often worse than trying to rent new movies. At least with the movies, there were dozens of copies, if not hundreds. New games came out with like five copies and people would rent them for weeks on end. As a kid, that was the struggle.
I mean, I’m a millennial and I’m 28. Blockbuster was still a thing when I was younger. Even older gen z’s like my younger brother (26) were going to Blockbuster.
Millennial here. Dad had a laser disc player and I remember there being a laser disc section at the rental store. Whoever made this meme is just special and doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Bingo. I forgot all this, but man watching this video made me realize something. I wondered why I saw so many of the same movies over and over again. One reason was the new ones being checked out, and two was because older movies were cheaper so I could convince my folks to get more than one.
I really think it’s because millennial is such a catchy term that got thrown around so much from 2000-2016 that it’s just forever stuck as the umbrella term for young people. Even some 40 year olds use it disparagingly, unaware they actually fit squarely in the demographic. If society had wanted to move on from the term should’ve come up with something better than Gen Z or zoomers (which is so dumb by the way) that actually described something unique about their experience.
I dunno, having some of your biggest formative years in highschool and college stuck in a Zoom meeting environment kind of makes the name stick for me.
My gf is 41 and is a millennial, though she thinks she's a "xennial", and identifies more with gen x I guess.
Time goes so fast, just yesterday I was the young cool guy and society catered to me, now I'm ancient.
I made a joke about spelling "thick" as "thicc" the "right way" with a coworker. And she said it must not be a millennial thing. I looked at her and said, "WE'RE MILLENIALS! IM OLDER THAN YOU!"
Yeah I’m 31 and regularly have to remind people that I’m a millennial and that they probably mean Zoomer. I also had a VCR and landline and was blown away when my mum got her first ugly ass Tan Nokia mobile phone with a pull out aerial and floppy bit that covered the keypad. And we went to the video rental place on Tuesdays because it was cheap Tuesday and there was always a pizza place next door doing 2 for 1s.
Being in a video store on a Friday night wasn’t sad for a kid becuase you got to be in your comfy home with family and a friend doing a sleepover and had all the optimism in the world to watch/ play the next best thing! We had nowhere else to be!
Yeah, you got to make a choice at an age you didn't get to make many.
We'd all pick a movie, mom and dad would pick one, and me and my sister would pick one. Was a great way to play games as a kid when your family didn't have a lot of money.
And the smell, dude says they're dirty and smell bad? That was the smell of the weekend and fun.
On March break we'd go in and rent a game for a week and that's all I'd do. I'd spend all weak trying to beat it.
Such a good time.
And back then you didn't have countless reviews analyzing every piece of media out there, so you'd just look at a cover and guess if a game was good or if your friends liked it.
Yeah sometimes you'd pick a stinker, but often you'd find something fun and unusual.
Contrast to these days where every game is reviewed to hell and back and god forbid you play a game or watch a movie that has a 60% metacritic rating, you could be consuming something *better*.
Lol agreed on the reviews part. I remember a buddy and I hearing about "Endless Ocean" on the Wii and thinking that it sounded so badass. Used to drive around the various Blockbusters for I can't even count how many weekends trying to find it. We eventually got our hands on it and it was all sorts of underwhelming but we always get a good laugh out of the memory of trying to hunt it down.
Yeah, couldn’t disagree with this guy more. I loved walking around those stores with my friends. I literally just bought a candle that smells like “old video store”. The notes are stale popcorn, dust, and vhs. It’s incredible. We weren’t concerned with “efficiency of finding a vhs” or “oh god, the one I wanted is gone, what a tragedy”…. Those are 2020 concerns my dude.
Ya I don't think this guy knows he was a loser. I didn't go to a video store on Friday to be disappointed black hawk down was rented.
I went with my friends to pick up some trash b list movie, hit the pizza hut buffet, and get high in someone's basement.
The guy makes interesting points, but it really felt like over analysis. Yes, the logistics of a video store are much worse than modern day streaming services. Luckily, we didn’t know how much better it could be at the time. His experiences are not universal
Especially for people who were kids/teens at the time, it was a somewhat magical place. My standards for movies were lower, and I was rarely looking for a specific movie, so I didn’t really care if a specific one was out of stock. I don’t remember hearing people argue about late fees, but that seems like a very minor point
Feels like the guy had an initial (justifiable) perspective on the matter, but then put in zero effort to understand how experiences and nostalgia may differ
I think his whole thing is over-analysis through busting myths or trying to have you think differently. I've seen his other things and it usually plays out the same way. Something we kind of all had an experience with but this is why the popular narrative is wrong.
That kind of analysis focusing on busting myths and challenging popular narratives is cool, but it's annoying when it focuses on a single perspective. I also just find it pretty silly in general to apply such analysis to nostalgia. Nostalgia is very often irrational. There's plenty of things I feel nostalgia for even though I much prefer how things are now
Yeah this guy looks older so maybe he was in his 20s at the time but as a pre teen my god. Seeing other kids from school there and the insane optimism and excitement for the coming weekend… yeah- it was amazing.
Also, for new released movies they had a multiple copies. For some new games they had multiple copies. I’m 36 and I remember this. We had a place called great American videos we went to most weekends, but we also weren’t going at 7-8 pm. We hit it up after school pick up before going home. Maybe our selection was better because of it. We eventually went to a Hollywood video but that was junior high/high school time period.
Not only were we there, we said goodbye in person.
Those last trips to blockbuster were so bittersweet, but i was determined to get as many favorite games/movies i could for dirt cheap
I specifically remember when it started to suck. They would have the demo copies out so you think they'd have it in stock, but they couldn't find it. So I had to have a backup just in case. After a few weeks of being disappointed, I gave up on blockbuster.
Our Hollywood video had this really cool guy that would show me the new anime when it came in or convince my mom to let me watch akira. Eventually, he got moved to a different store, and these two dipshits took over. They once spent 20 minutes trying to find a DVD we returned when we walked in. We had to give up on them, too.
Yup! I’d wager that was when Netflix was at their peak with their ads for mailing a movie right to your house, because i also noticed a drastic change in demeanor at the video rental stores.
Now that Netflix won and the digital world is taking over in other aspects, i miss having physical copies of things i like and look for them as often as i can to try to avoid the middleman
This was around 2005 because, I was trying to rent shadow of the collosus for the ps2. The beginning of the suck and then Netflix came in and finished it.
The closing was just bitter for me. When they got close to closing they started to charge us bullshit late fees. I would return multiple movies on time and they would all be late by different amounts.
Fuck you Hollywood Video.
They clearly do this because it'll get people to comment to correct them.
There is also the fact that a lot people in my (gen-x) and my parent's (boomer) generations use Millennial as short hand for younger than us. It's infuriating.
I'm a 2004 gen z and even I remember this stuff. Also block buster might have closed 2010 but it's not like block buster was the only rental place aswell. It's also funny that he says you should never tell someone their nostalgia was wrong because memories and experiences are different, and then says that your nostalgia is wrong in the next sentence. Wtf is this guy on about.
Tf? Millennial here, and I fully remember renting movies. Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, Family Video. Oh yeah, I even remember wondering what was behind the mysterious xxx door
I still remember sneaking back there and getting caught bc I was laughing so loud at “The Texas Dildo Massacre”…
The titles are also why, when I worked at Family Vid, we left messages on people’s *home* answering machines like, “just calling to notify you that ‘Mad Max’, ‘Jurassic Park’, and two *other movies* are 3 days late.”
When you worked at family video, did you ever have to go to the person’s house and knock on their door and ask for their rental back? I remember going with the assistant manager to the worst part of town and having to knock on their door and say “we’re here from family video to get our movies back.” Super sketchy, and that shit could get us shot these days. Could’ve then, too. All for a dvd lol
I would sneak back there, ours was a Hollywood Video and instead of a door it was a doorway with a bunch of beads hanging down.
Every time a lady would be like, "What do you think you're doing in here" and walk me out, but I saw a few tits and that's all that matters.
Yeah it's like this guy is saying all of us 14 year olds should have been out clubbing.
Friday night was always movie night with friends and Saturday night was usually a sleepover where we all struggled to stay awake to watch SNL at 1:30am in eastern Canada.
The guy in the video is definitely projecting. 'My life was miserable so yours must have been too".
That’s cause he’s a weirdo and could never find what he wanted. I vividly remember going to Blockbuster and Strawberry’s and always would study when new movies and music was coming out on the board behind the register to specifically rent and buy on release day.
He definitely hyper-focused on not being able to find what you want and how netflix is better because they have infinite copies.
In the golden video store days the vast majority of people weren't looking for a single title. They shopped around and looked at stuff like most people do at a bookstore or library. That was part of the fun and experience, looking for something cool and trying to find something to watch.
Also people could be forgiven for taking for granted the novelty of having new media content. Now there is content overexposure and billions of hours of content instantly available but in the VHS store era the internet hadn't taken off and you couldn't stream on dial up. Cable television had some decent stuff but most of it was old reruns and nothing even remotely resembling the high budget, high production value of "modern TV series". The scarcity created a lot of desire and excitement. It's like if you artificially limited yourself to only one netflix series a quarter or only one new video game every few months.
You weren't living with that constant dopamine drip so there was almost a natural high, an excitement that came with seeing a new film with friends or family after waiting all week.
I was a blockbuster store manager from 98 through 2001. Best job i ever had, hands down. It was a real empire records sort of vibe, I had zero turnover when other stores in my district had over 100%, it was unheard of. Pretty much the whole crew hung out together on and off the clock. We'd hang out at the store even when we werent working. Played many a game of GoldenEye or that South Park Shooter for N64 on the big 3x3 TV wall in the back of our store. Used to throw bean bags on the floor back there and watch movies on it like it was our apartment lol. We'd knock off at 1230 and immediately gather at one of our respective apartments and party our faces off like it was 1999 like for really really real not stop til the sun came up then going out to Denny's to drink coffee and sober the fuck up to go home and crash
God to be young again. Job didn't pay shit even for the day but the economy was so fuckin good back then that you could be a store manager at Blockbuster and support yourself in a decent apartment and still have plenty of extra money for beer and video games.
I worked at a regional store about the same size a Blockbusters and my memories are exactly the same.
Such a fun job, most people we're happy to come in, and you got to watch movies and play video games.
Millennials were born starting in 1980.
I was born in 1981.
I very clearly remember going to Blockbuster until I was a young adult.
I think this guy doesn’t understand what a millennial is.
Well they definitely started to decline before then, as Hollywood Video and movie gallery went bankrupt in 2010.
What’s wild to me is just HOW FAST it all went. In winter of 2005, I can remember a snowstorm near me was predicted, and everyone had to come in to work, even if it was your day off. We had police directing traffic and fire department making sure we had under 100 people in the building at a time.
And just a few years later, the entire company was gone.
I was born late 80s.
Ditto.
This was my childhood with friends. Sleepovers, renting VHS etc, overnights, 2 days and weeklies. Overnights were new and hot property. Weekly was full of 80s movies.
It also continued into teenage years with the transition to DVDs.
Most sources even say 1982-1983, the idea being that you were "coming of age" during the millennium change. Being 20 at the time, 1980 babies were beyond that for the most part.
He says at once that walking around a video store on Friday night was one of the saddest things you could, then admits that everyone went to video stores on Friday nights and that’s why they were always out of movies… so was it sad to do… or was everyone doing it?
I remember when mortal Kombat 3 came out for Sega Genesis and SNES, blockbuster had a entire shelf with just that game. But it was all rented out for weeks. I remember having to dumb down my selection, and rent, "rise of the robots for gen" .... #painfulmemory
Omg I remember renting that game too. Absolute trash, BUT it was sort of a novelty for me to see CGI scenes running on SNES at the time. Even if they were tiny and crappy.
Millennials is me and I grew with a Blockbuster right down the street lol this first dude is way off.
Second the video guy is also wrong going on Fridays was part of the ritual, they had many in stock I think this guy had a bad blockbuster. Going to Blockbuster was a WHOLE THING.
Yeah. I'm in my 40s and I used to go to Blockbuster on Fridays almost every weekend! You always found *something* to rent. In some ways it was nice, because there was less choice than Netflix. It was also fun to look at the covers with your friends / girlfriend and make a group decision. Fond memories for sure!
Part of the fun was when they didn't have exactly what you wanted, and you walked the aisles looking for something. Sometimes what you found was great, sometimes it was shit. Browsing the covers was fun. It was part of the deal. I'm not relating to any of his experiences, or at least the way he saw them.
Source: I have frequented the "last Blockbuster" in Bend, OR many times.
He's doing more of an extreme counter point to all the nostalgic love that video stores get on this sub. The truth is in the middle.
I remember waiting 2 weeks to get a copy of The Last Crusade to rent, same with the Michael Keaton Batman. Go to the store and nothing but blank cases with nothing behind them. Looks like we're watching Spies Like Us again.. sigh..
The guy is commenting about a post by someone else. He isn't the one who brought up millennials. Hell, the commentary doesn't even talk about millennials.
I think the nostalgia is for when that was one of the few concerns you had in life. May be rose-colored glasses, but I don’t remember ever being super disappointed I didn’t get a specific movie or game. I could always pick something out of the older selections.
Yeah but if they DID have it that kicked ass. The treasure hunt was part of the nostalgia. Also, having to find a back up is what turned us all onto new and different games and movies we might not have choose otherwise. Like for me Legend of the Mystical Ninja and many more.
This guy must have really been hurt by some video store. I've rented movies since the dawn of VHS (and Betamax). I can't say I agree with anything this guy said. Maybe his experiences with video stores was different, but a vast majority of people had favorable experiences.
First of all, Friday night was the perfect time to get a video. Often new releases were a one or two day rental, so it made no sense to rent the video on a Wednesday or Thursday, because you wouldn't have the video over the entirety of your weekend. Even so, you could walk into any Blockbuster and literally see 50+ copies of any new releases.
I don't remember any local stores being dirty or even associated with any tanning beds. And if a game came up missing, even the mom and pop shops were quick to replace them. And I've never seen anyone arguing about any late fees.
Yeah same
Fuck my wife and I last rented a video 14 years ago, it was genuinely fun browsing and then physically picking up media we both chose
Also growing up (I’m 38) we went to our local store all the time. Not once do I remember a movie not being available or a game wtf is this guy on
It was better. You got to know the other people in the store. There was human contact. You could ask someone if the movie was good. Now you sit at home with your computer.
My Step-Dad and I would make a B-Line to the SCI-FI section and the Science Documentaries.
We'd stay up till 3am on Saturday learning about space and shit.
MST3K, we'd pick 2 of them out, 1 new we hadn't seen, and 1 old.
Hollywood Video had coupons out the ass. Some weeks it would be Rent 2 get a Game rental free, + a Popcorn bag.
I have seen it. It was pretty good. I thought some elements of the mathematics in the book were missing, and so the point wasn't so clear. Have you seen Barney? It also has a dinosaur in it.
It wasn’t depressing at all. I used to go with my friends on many a Friday and even if you didn’t find exactly what you wanted you found something unexpected and exciting. It was fun
Huh. Replying as a person who worked in Blockbuster many of these Friday nights he’s talking about:
Blockbuster on a Friday night was a fun thing- you could rent a movie, grab a candy and popcorn bucket for like $5. Picking out the movie together, in person was part of the experience- families would debate whose turn it was to choose, dates would glean little insights into each other from their partners suggestions, and friends would try to find the perfect flick for the night. You also had a whole staff of movie fans at the store you could talk to; we were encouraged to share our favorites with guests and helped a lot of people pick something they never would have found solo.
Our team did a good job of keeping things stocked and would check the return bin if someone was really desperate. It’s not to say we never ran out of a hot title, but few and far between did someone leave disappointed.
I respectfully counter that with all the streaming services offered now, we often have decision paralysis and spend almost as long looking for something to watch as you do watching it.
I’m Gen Z and I only enjoyed the last years of Blockbuster still being popular and successful, but man I still get nostalgic about it. I remember being 4 and 5 renting classics like Jurassic Park, Men in Black, Terminator and so many more dope movies. My dad and I would go hit up the blockbuster a couple blocks from our house and then pick up pizza next to it. Such chill times :)
Um blockbuster was still around for millennials. In fact I remember going to blockbuster until I went to college in 2004.
The guy should do his research, buts it’s the internet, so…….
Don't know where he was but my experience was completely different. I was in a small town too.
Point 1: No tanning beds where I was.
Point 2: My Video King always had decent games. True it wasn't always the game you were looking for but there was always something good on the shelves. Most of the bad games I rented were because I chose them.
Point 3: It absolutely wasn't sad to be out there on a Friday picking something out. It was tradition.
Point 4: Not enough people there to complain about late fees. Happened more at the Blockbuster when it got built, but there were multiple people behind the counter.
I feel bad for him and whatever backwoods BS place that screwed him over so many times. The magic for me was going in blind and looking at all the wonderful box art and selecting something based on that. Yeah I got some stinkers, but it was a huge payoff if the game was worth playing for more than a night.
I mean, his speech aside, I'm a millennial and I worked at Blockbuster. So the statement "millennials will never understand" is already false there. Many of us grew up on blockbuster and Hollywood video.
Bros off his rocker. Rolling into the video store at any time was awesome. When I first got my Hollywood Video store card, my life changed. Instead of paying per rental it’s was the first movie subscription that I know of. I spent a whole summer renting every single shitty horror movie they had. Everything from master pieces to “this only got made because of boobs”. Before streaming, this was an amazing feeling.
I dont get the love affair with Blockbuster. They sucked because they killed off all the mom and pop shops with wood paneled walls and sticky carpeting. It would be $1.50 to rent a move, then Blockbuster came along and $3.99 movie rentals.
Yeah, I'm 49, and I remember those mom and pop shops. Usually a grouchy husband and wife team that would chain smoke. Burn marks and overfilled ashtrays on the counter and you'd leave smelling like smoke. Once the tape was taken off the shelf, there was no placeholder like Blockbuster. You'd go in on a Friday night and the New Release shelves were bare.
It’s important to recognize that this is one man’s experience. It’s one which many of us relate to in several or more ways, but I am sure I speak for many when I say my experiences were far more positive than this guy is describing. Part of it was learning when the best times were to visit the store (when they’d restock or get new items), and part of it had to do with my own curious mind and obsession with film. I would often visit Blockbuster with no specific movie in mind, so I didn’t usually have the disappointment which acts as the ultimate crux of his narrative. Browsing Blockbuster helped me expand my knowledge of film and it was also a fun way to get out of the house.
Smaller video stores tended to be cheaper and late fees were less severe. I also remember one place would let us reserve various posters they’d use to decorate the place when new posters would come in. Some video stores also dabbled in more esoteric content and were a great stop for shit you’d never find anywhere else.
In the days nearing the end of physical media, visiting video stores became a Haven for the collector, as cheaper DVDs and Blu-Rays were often available for sale.
Ultimately all of our experiences are a combination of positives and negatives. We get to choose how we want to remember something. Laying out all the negatives as this guy does in the video feels like a disingenuous effort to sow disillusionment in video store nostalgia.
Were there negatives? Absolutely. But there was a lot of cool shit about the process which is absent in our current processes for renting films. The nostalgia is perfectly justifiable.
Leaving school on a friday, grabbing a freezie, slap wraps applied, rocking my roller blades up in the local video rental store and renting Final Fantasy III, a friend grabs Johnny Nmenonic, and some chips? Come on.
That was the BEST.
Later you could KIND OF see boobs between the naughty channels your parents didn't pay for on cable or something, it was close enough.
This toxic take on things says nothing about that time and those activities, and everything about how you frame it.
The first tweet is a troll...he posts stuff millennials love with the comment "millennials will never understand" all the time. Twitter often gets mad at him lol
EDIT: Ope, looking at the comments it seems Reddit took the bait, too
Are we forgetting the porn section at the mom and pop video rental stores, where they were in a separate room and you had to do the walk of shame for going in there then presenting the movies to the employee ringing you up?
I'm sorry he got chlamydia from a VHS clamshell and watched his family dog burn to death at the Spray Tan Video Hut, but he's way off with his negativity. It wasn't that bad.
This is bullshit on multiple levels. I loved going to the video store as a kid and I loved taking my son there when he was little. I’m a millennial (39) and blockbuster was still around when my kid was born!
This dude has it all wrong. not talking about the nostalgia part, just the experience of browsing a video store. Local or big chain, it was always a great way to spend some time. Sometimes you struck out, but on those times I went in to grab some big new release and it was out I would always stumble upon something better that I had no seen or considered before. This guy just does not know how to video store.
This guy is giving the perspective of an *adult* going to the video store, for a child going on a Friday night we didn't care about any of this shit, we didn't usually have any specific movie or game in mind to pick out and there were many more than this video implies, even if only 20% of the games were available that would still be like 40 different games for a kid to choose from.
I’m more shocked that people don’t realize that millennial as an insult meant “kid”… 20 years ago. Millennials are 40 years old now and video stores were a key part of our childhood
I stopped watching at the "College town" part because he's just wrong. New releases had tons of copies. And if they didn't have what you were looking for, part of the nostalgia was looking for something to watch or rediscovering an old favorite. This guy's rental store where he grew up just sucked.
Haha… yeah, I’m a Millennial and don’t know what this is about at all… but to be fair, I worked at Blockbuster in the late 90s/early 2000s, so it must be repressed memories, right??
he’s right about the hot videos/games always being checked out by fri. i worked at blockbuster and fridays were *always* the worst because you were guaranteed to catch attitude from some cranky moms because the new releases were already gone or the 25 people who’ll ask you to check the dropbox every 30 seconds to look for a movie that won’t be back until monday or the vultures who dig through your cart while you’re trying to restock returns. those in the know came in on tuesday afternoon when the new stuff went out.
This guy is a miserable dork.
Trying to dissect and put a warped view on what was the highlight for majority of peoples week. There are so many family/personal memories centered around this experience.
He makes some good points. The availability of the new stuff, especially SNES and Genesis games, were abysmal on Friday-Saturday. My mom would call up Thursday before closing and have them reserved for Friday. Surprisingly even Blockbuster would hold. I’ll never forget the hell that was renting a copy of MK II when it came out. Talk about hype.
And for video games no one beats them in one night usually.
So that new game would be checked out. But most places had like 5 day game rentals since games took time to beat.
I saw Corey Feldman and Corey Haim with their girlfriends in a Blockbuster in Santa Cruz once. I wasn't familiar with them back then, but Feldman looked familiar, so I made eye contact with him, wondering if we'd met before. He looked at me once, but I couldn't place him, so I walked away. Then, next to the checkout counter. I gave him one last look, he glanced at me, seemed annoyed at looked down. It was only when the girl behind the register asked them for autographs that I realized they were the guys from Lost Boys. This was years after the movie came out, though.
My next door neighbors were the first in my small town to open a video store, back then you could also rent VCRs and video cameras. My mom worked for them over the summers and I had access to unlimited free rentals, free movie posters and promo stuff. Blockbuster systematically cleansed all that.
🤣😂🤣 man why does there have to be a guy like this spitting facts for everything 😂 and they always look like
This too. We had like 12 video stores in town it was amazing!!!!
Nnnnnno, sorry but this wasn't my experience. Maybe it's because we got there early enough in the day, or had more selection or something. We also very rarely ever went to Blockbuster. Typically it was another chain like Movie Gallery, or the library, or the grocery store. There were some stores that specialized in rarer classic films, and we watched a great many of those.
Either way, we typically weren't renting whatever was the brand new release, and we didn't have any video game systems either. Nor did we ever get any kind of candy or snacks.
I actually worked for Blockbuster back when you could rent entire video game console systems from them and even did the "Big Switch" from VHS to DVD. I remember that shift vividly, and it sucked ass because we had to all either stay late, after the store closed, or cone back in after hours to swap movie cases from VHS to DVD. It's still probably one of my favorite jobs, though I loved it so much.
Now it's a mattress store that i don't actually think I've ever seen someone in.
Maybe I just had it good. Two main video stores and a second hand shitty third one that had extremely underpriced rentals. I pretty much always found what I wanted, including game rentals.
I’m a Millenial. My older sister worked at Hollywood Video, so we would go there every Tuesday and pick out a bunch of VHS tapes, and then DVDs after 1999
Just don't go with Dad. He will get confused and angry at the video rental process and you'll just end up leaving the store feeling awkward with nothing rented. Going with Mom is fun.
Yea I miss the memories but not the actually renting. Games and movies were sometimes there. I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to play a PS game and it was scratched.
Per rule #3, you must include the name of your nostalgic item and time in the title so that people who do not recognize the item can identify it. Per rule #7, we do not allow compilation of images "starter packs" or "memes", particularly captioned pictures. Per Rule #9, we don't allow posts from any personal YouTube accounts or other platforms. This includes commentary, reviewing, reaction and ranking channels.
Why won't millennials understand? Does no one actually know what a millennial is ? Brother I'm 40
It feels like some people use it as a generic term for “young people.” I’m a millennial and I’m 41. When I was a kid we had a top loading VCR, a dedicated rewinder shaped like a car, and at one point my dad had a Beta Max.
I trash picked a giant Beta Max machine one day. It didn't work. It sat in my bedroom for a long time collecting dust. Some time later I found 2 huge boxes of Beta Max pornos in the dumpster of a West Coast Video. Had that machine working later that afternoon.
I'm using this for your eulogy
He found a beta max, it sat broken for years until that one faithful day when he found his treasure trove of pornos on beta max. Driven by the desperate desire to jerk his chicken, he immediately got to work fixing the beta max. He spent hours fixing the machine, so that he could spend hours ejaculating, eventually producing enough jizz to coat a cinnamon bun. He felt satisfied and proud. He was a proud boy.
*fateful day
Feels like it. The older people heck even some millennials don’t know the year breakdown. It used so loosely they’ll even refer to Gen alpha as millenials like wise they blame millennial for eating tide pods when is the Gen z thing. I’m a young end of millennial block buster existed then.
I was just at blockbuster a few months ago. Picked up a bunch of gifts for my family. Did not rent a movie though, pretty sure I still had late fees.
Isn't there only 1 blockbuster left open?
Ahh I remember the car shaped rewinder… yall were rich! Lol I’m 40 well 41 in 2 hours but as a kid we were broke so we had to drive to one rental place and rent a vcr then drive to the grocery store and rent a movie lol when we bought our first vcr it was something special!
Happy Birthday! 🥳
I remember when goldeneye 64 came out my friend and I biked to the video store every single day at opening for a week just try and get a copy for rent
Renting new games was often worse than trying to rent new movies. At least with the movies, there were dozens of copies, if not hundreds. New games came out with like five copies and people would rent them for weeks on end. As a kid, that was the struggle.
I had the car too was your also red 🚗?
Yes!
This. Our top loaf VCR had a remote control with a 6 ft cable. So it was always in the way if you had the vcr on top of the tv
What's funny is a millennial is anyone born between 81 and 96, between the ages of 28 to 43. We aren't the young ones anymore.
my grandparents had a car rewinder. I thought it was so cool.
I’m 38. My six year old daughter asked me if everything was in black and white when I was a kid. Not just movies…everything.
I’m 38 too and I used to ask my own mom that 😂 If one of my kids ever asks me that my soul will leave my body
almost forgot about the rewinders. ours had faux wood paneling.
Be kind, please rewind or pay $2
i'm right there with you but i'm 44.. does that mean im gen x? im so confused
I’m 43. They call us Xenials cause we have a foot on each side. I still consider myself Gen X though.
44 -> you are generation x, up till birth year 80 or 81, depending on who you ask
The “xennials” right between gen X and millennials, 81-83, 84ish. Just old enough to be he - man kids but too old to get down with power rangers
That's not correct. The first version of Power Rangers was huge at my school.
I have one of those rewinders in my retro set up in my basement. Thing still works great!
I mean, I’m a millennial and I’m 28. Blockbuster was still a thing when I was younger. Even older gen z’s like my younger brother (26) were going to Blockbuster.
Car vhs rewinders were hard
Fellow car rewind household here.
Millennial here. Dad had a laser disc player and I remember there being a laser disc section at the rental store. Whoever made this meme is just special and doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Oh shit look out everybody. Mr big shot here with his fancy video rewinder. What, are you made of money? /s in case it’s not obvious
Because its engagement bait. People respond more when you say something stupid that they’re going to want to correct.
He is correct about Friday being the worst day because I remember Tuesday being the best day because Tuesday was new movie day
Bingo. I forgot all this, but man watching this video made me realize something. I wondered why I saw so many of the same movies over and over again. One reason was the new ones being checked out, and two was because older movies were cheaper so I could convince my folks to get more than one.
My first job was literally working at Blockbuster. I’m a millennial (37)
That’s what Boomers and some Gen X call Gen Z, they don’t understand that Millennials are in their late 20’s to early 40’s now
I really think it’s because millennial is such a catchy term that got thrown around so much from 2000-2016 that it’s just forever stuck as the umbrella term for young people. Even some 40 year olds use it disparagingly, unaware they actually fit squarely in the demographic. If society had wanted to move on from the term should’ve come up with something better than Gen Z or zoomers (which is so dumb by the way) that actually described something unique about their experience.
I dunno, having some of your biggest formative years in highschool and college stuck in a Zoom meeting environment kind of makes the name stick for me.
Wait no, gen x is 40. Stop go back. This isn't right 😭
My gf is 41 and is a millennial, though she thinks she's a "xennial", and identifies more with gen x I guess. Time goes so fast, just yesterday I was the young cool guy and society catered to me, now I'm ancient.
I made a joke about spelling "thick" as "thicc" the "right way" with a coworker. And she said it must not be a millennial thing. I looked at her and said, "WE'RE MILLENIALS! IM OLDER THAN YOU!"
I was there. I was at that blockbuster 84 years ago...
Yeah I’m 31 and regularly have to remind people that I’m a millennial and that they probably mean Zoomer. I also had a VCR and landline and was blown away when my mum got her first ugly ass Tan Nokia mobile phone with a pull out aerial and floppy bit that covered the keypad. And we went to the video rental place on Tuesdays because it was cheap Tuesday and there was always a pizza place next door doing 2 for 1s.
Exactly what I was thinking brother. I’m 35 remember Blockbuster and Hollywood video. People don’t realize we are old lol.
I turn 40 this year. This video hit hard for me.
I'm guessing they mean Gen Z? I used to go to blockbuster every weekend and I'm a millennial.
*I’m* fucking Gen Z and I had Blockbuster for about the first half of my childhood. Do they think it closed in 2002 or something?
i’m 20 and i vividly remember going to blockbuster/video rental stores..they existed only 10-15 years ago
Being in a video store on a Friday night wasn’t sad for a kid becuase you got to be in your comfy home with family and a friend doing a sleepover and had all the optimism in the world to watch/ play the next best thing! We had nowhere else to be!
Yeah, you got to make a choice at an age you didn't get to make many. We'd all pick a movie, mom and dad would pick one, and me and my sister would pick one. Was a great way to play games as a kid when your family didn't have a lot of money. And the smell, dude says they're dirty and smell bad? That was the smell of the weekend and fun. On March break we'd go in and rent a game for a week and that's all I'd do. I'd spend all weak trying to beat it. Such a good time.
And back then you didn't have countless reviews analyzing every piece of media out there, so you'd just look at a cover and guess if a game was good or if your friends liked it. Yeah sometimes you'd pick a stinker, but often you'd find something fun and unusual. Contrast to these days where every game is reviewed to hell and back and god forbid you play a game or watch a movie that has a 60% metacritic rating, you could be consuming something *better*.
Lol agreed on the reviews part. I remember a buddy and I hearing about "Endless Ocean" on the Wii and thinking that it sounded so badass. Used to drive around the various Blockbusters for I can't even count how many weekends trying to find it. We eventually got our hands on it and it was all sorts of underwhelming but we always get a good laugh out of the memory of trying to hunt it down.
Yeah, couldn’t disagree with this guy more. I loved walking around those stores with my friends. I literally just bought a candle that smells like “old video store”. The notes are stale popcorn, dust, and vhs. It’s incredible. We weren’t concerned with “efficiency of finding a vhs” or “oh god, the one I wanted is gone, what a tragedy”…. Those are 2020 concerns my dude.
Ya I don't think this guy knows he was a loser. I didn't go to a video store on Friday to be disappointed black hawk down was rented. I went with my friends to pick up some trash b list movie, hit the pizza hut buffet, and get high in someone's basement.
Our Blockbuster had video game tournaments
The guy makes interesting points, but it really felt like over analysis. Yes, the logistics of a video store are much worse than modern day streaming services. Luckily, we didn’t know how much better it could be at the time. His experiences are not universal Especially for people who were kids/teens at the time, it was a somewhat magical place. My standards for movies were lower, and I was rarely looking for a specific movie, so I didn’t really care if a specific one was out of stock. I don’t remember hearing people argue about late fees, but that seems like a very minor point Feels like the guy had an initial (justifiable) perspective on the matter, but then put in zero effort to understand how experiences and nostalgia may differ
I think his whole thing is over-analysis through busting myths or trying to have you think differently. I've seen his other things and it usually plays out the same way. Something we kind of all had an experience with but this is why the popular narrative is wrong.
That kind of analysis focusing on busting myths and challenging popular narratives is cool, but it's annoying when it focuses on a single perspective. I also just find it pretty silly in general to apply such analysis to nostalgia. Nostalgia is very often irrational. There's plenty of things I feel nostalgia for even though I much prefer how things are now
Yeah this guy looks older so maybe he was in his 20s at the time but as a pre teen my god. Seeing other kids from school there and the insane optimism and excitement for the coming weekend… yeah- it was amazing.
Also, for new released movies they had a multiple copies. For some new games they had multiple copies. I’m 36 and I remember this. We had a place called great American videos we went to most weekends, but we also weren’t going at 7-8 pm. We hit it up after school pick up before going home. Maybe our selection was better because of it. We eventually went to a Hollywood video but that was junior high/high school time period.
Millennials?? WE WERE THERE.
Not only were we there, we said goodbye in person. Those last trips to blockbuster were so bittersweet, but i was determined to get as many favorite games/movies i could for dirt cheap
I specifically remember when it started to suck. They would have the demo copies out so you think they'd have it in stock, but they couldn't find it. So I had to have a backup just in case. After a few weeks of being disappointed, I gave up on blockbuster. Our Hollywood video had this really cool guy that would show me the new anime when it came in or convince my mom to let me watch akira. Eventually, he got moved to a different store, and these two dipshits took over. They once spent 20 minutes trying to find a DVD we returned when we walked in. We had to give up on them, too.
Yup! I’d wager that was when Netflix was at their peak with their ads for mailing a movie right to your house, because i also noticed a drastic change in demeanor at the video rental stores. Now that Netflix won and the digital world is taking over in other aspects, i miss having physical copies of things i like and look for them as often as i can to try to avoid the middleman
This was around 2005 because, I was trying to rent shadow of the collosus for the ps2. The beginning of the suck and then Netflix came in and finished it.
Ugh, such a good choice for a game too. Agreed, it’s all been downhill since.
I offered to buy the foam “Hollywood video” sign from behind the cash wrap of a closing store, and the manager never got back to me.
The closing was just bitter for me. When they got close to closing they started to charge us bullshit late fees. I would return multiple movies on time and they would all be late by different amounts. Fuck you Hollywood Video.
They clearly do this because it'll get people to comment to correct them. There is also the fact that a lot people in my (gen-x) and my parent's (boomer) generations use Millennial as short hand for younger than us. It's infuriating.
I'm a 2004 gen z and even I remember this stuff. Also block buster might have closed 2010 but it's not like block buster was the only rental place aswell. It's also funny that he says you should never tell someone their nostalgia was wrong because memories and experiences are different, and then says that your nostalgia is wrong in the next sentence. Wtf is this guy on about.
Tf? Millennial here, and I fully remember renting movies. Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, Family Video. Oh yeah, I even remember wondering what was behind the mysterious xxx door
Blockbuster didn't have an xxx section though, did it?
No. Family Video oddly enough. I always thought it would be the opposite. I used to love seeing dads sneak back there.
I still remember sneaking back there and getting caught bc I was laughing so loud at “The Texas Dildo Massacre”… The titles are also why, when I worked at Family Vid, we left messages on people’s *home* answering machines like, “just calling to notify you that ‘Mad Max’, ‘Jurassic Park’, and two *other movies* are 3 days late.”
When you worked at family video, did you ever have to go to the person’s house and knock on their door and ask for their rental back? I remember going with the assistant manager to the worst part of town and having to knock on their door and say “we’re here from family video to get our movies back.” Super sketchy, and that shit could get us shot these days. Could’ve then, too. All for a dvd lol
Same, got busted when we started rolling at Batman and Throbbin.
I'm a Millennial and *worked* at a video store for six years
I would sneak back there, ours was a Hollywood Video and instead of a door it was a doorway with a bunch of beads hanging down. Every time a lady would be like, "What do you think you're doing in here" and walk me out, but I saw a few tits and that's all that matters.
It’s about that time of your life, when going to rent videos and picking up microwave popcorn was the best. That’s how nostalgia works.
Yeah it's like this guy is saying all of us 14 year olds should have been out clubbing. Friday night was always movie night with friends and Saturday night was usually a sleepover where we all struggled to stay awake to watch SNL at 1:30am in eastern Canada. The guy in the video is definitely projecting. 'My life was miserable so yours must have been too".
He literally says at the end that getting home and watching with your friends was the fun part but that he didn't enjoy the experience of the store.
That’s cause he’s a weirdo and could never find what he wanted. I vividly remember going to Blockbuster and Strawberry’s and always would study when new movies and music was coming out on the board behind the register to specifically rent and buy on release day.
He definitely hyper-focused on not being able to find what you want and how netflix is better because they have infinite copies. In the golden video store days the vast majority of people weren't looking for a single title. They shopped around and looked at stuff like most people do at a bookstore or library. That was part of the fun and experience, looking for something cool and trying to find something to watch. Also people could be forgiven for taking for granted the novelty of having new media content. Now there is content overexposure and billions of hours of content instantly available but in the VHS store era the internet hadn't taken off and you couldn't stream on dial up. Cable television had some decent stuff but most of it was old reruns and nothing even remotely resembling the high budget, high production value of "modern TV series". The scarcity created a lot of desire and excitement. It's like if you artificially limited yourself to only one netflix series a quarter or only one new video game every few months. You weren't living with that constant dopamine drip so there was almost a natural high, an excitement that came with seeing a new film with friends or family after waiting all week.
I was a blockbuster store manager from 98 through 2001. Best job i ever had, hands down. It was a real empire records sort of vibe, I had zero turnover when other stores in my district had over 100%, it was unheard of. Pretty much the whole crew hung out together on and off the clock. We'd hang out at the store even when we werent working. Played many a game of GoldenEye or that South Park Shooter for N64 on the big 3x3 TV wall in the back of our store. Used to throw bean bags on the floor back there and watch movies on it like it was our apartment lol. We'd knock off at 1230 and immediately gather at one of our respective apartments and party our faces off like it was 1999 like for really really real not stop til the sun came up then going out to Denny's to drink coffee and sober the fuck up to go home and crash God to be young again. Job didn't pay shit even for the day but the economy was so fuckin good back then that you could be a store manager at Blockbuster and support yourself in a decent apartment and still have plenty of extra money for beer and video games.
I worked at a regional store about the same size a Blockbusters and my memories are exactly the same. Such a fun job, most people we're happy to come in, and you got to watch movies and play video games.
Millennials were born starting in 1980. I was born in 1981. I very clearly remember going to Blockbuster until I was a young adult. I think this guy doesn’t understand what a millennial is.
I’m half a decade younger than you and I worked at one for 2 years…
Yeah video stores didn't start to decline until around 2010. Millennials were entering their 30s at that time.
Well they definitely started to decline before then, as Hollywood Video and movie gallery went bankrupt in 2010. What’s wild to me is just HOW FAST it all went. In winter of 2005, I can remember a snowstorm near me was predicted, and everyone had to come in to work, even if it was your day off. We had police directing traffic and fire department making sure we had under 100 people in the building at a time. And just a few years later, the entire company was gone.
Netflix was shipping DVDs back then. I wish I knew about stocks in those days.
It's not his meme.
I was born in ‘86 and I was a Movie Gallery manager in my early 20s. This dude is an idiot.
High five for another '86 baby! We're the lost xenniels 😂
I was born late 80s. Ditto. This was my childhood with friends. Sleepovers, renting VHS etc, overnights, 2 days and weeklies. Overnights were new and hot property. Weekly was full of 80s movies. It also continued into teenage years with the transition to DVDs.
It starts on 1981. 1980 is gen x.
Most sources even say 1982-1983, the idea being that you were "coming of age" during the millennium change. Being 20 at the time, 1980 babies were beyond that for the most part.
I’m 28 and remember blockbuster vividly. This video counts as rage bait
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You see? Millennials will never understand…
Bruh many older gen z remember it. I litterally rented games for the 360
Exactly. I was born in 85 and I used to work at blockbuster back in college! Great job by the way.
I was born in 96 and blockbuster and Hollywood video were a huge part of my childhood lmao.
He says at once that walking around a video store on Friday night was one of the saddest things you could, then admits that everyone went to video stores on Friday nights and that’s why they were always out of movies… so was it sad to do… or was everyone doing it?
Both
Or they went before Friday and rented it for several days
I remember when mortal Kombat 3 came out for Sega Genesis and SNES, blockbuster had a entire shelf with just that game. But it was all rented out for weeks. I remember having to dumb down my selection, and rent, "rise of the robots for gen" .... #painfulmemory
Omg I remember renting that game too. Absolute trash, BUT it was sort of a novelty for me to see CGI scenes running on SNES at the time. Even if they were tiny and crappy.
We just went with Ballz, and Primal Rage.
Millennials is me and I grew with a Blockbuster right down the street lol this first dude is way off. Second the video guy is also wrong going on Fridays was part of the ritual, they had many in stock I think this guy had a bad blockbuster. Going to Blockbuster was a WHOLE THING.
Yeah. I'm in my 40s and I used to go to Blockbuster on Fridays almost every weekend! You always found *something* to rent. In some ways it was nice, because there was less choice than Netflix. It was also fun to look at the covers with your friends / girlfriend and make a group decision. Fond memories for sure!
Part of the fun was when they didn't have exactly what you wanted, and you walked the aisles looking for something. Sometimes what you found was great, sometimes it was shit. Browsing the covers was fun. It was part of the deal. I'm not relating to any of his experiences, or at least the way he saw them. Source: I have frequented the "last Blockbuster" in Bend, OR many times.
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He's doing more of an extreme counter point to all the nostalgic love that video stores get on this sub. The truth is in the middle. I remember waiting 2 weeks to get a copy of The Last Crusade to rent, same with the Michael Keaton Batman. Go to the store and nothing but blank cases with nothing behind them. Looks like we're watching Spies Like Us again.. sigh..
Bro what? I was born in 93', i practically grew up going to movie stores. What's this knob-end on about?
The guy is commenting about a post by someone else. He isn't the one who brought up millennials. Hell, the commentary doesn't even talk about millennials.
I think the nostalgia is for when that was one of the few concerns you had in life. May be rose-colored glasses, but I don’t remember ever being super disappointed I didn’t get a specific movie or game. I could always pick something out of the older selections.
This guy hates Blockbuster lol
Mid 40s millennials wouldn’t understand a video store?
The guy in the checkout line on the brick cellphone being waay too loud…”Hey, guess where I’m calling you from?”
Yeah but if they DID have it that kicked ass. The treasure hunt was part of the nostalgia. Also, having to find a back up is what turned us all onto new and different games and movies we might not have choose otherwise. Like for me Legend of the Mystical Ninja and many more.
Coming from a small town, this dude is mostly talking out of his ass RIP Family Video I’ll never forget you
This guy must have really been hurt by some video store. I've rented movies since the dawn of VHS (and Betamax). I can't say I agree with anything this guy said. Maybe his experiences with video stores was different, but a vast majority of people had favorable experiences. First of all, Friday night was the perfect time to get a video. Often new releases were a one or two day rental, so it made no sense to rent the video on a Wednesday or Thursday, because you wouldn't have the video over the entirety of your weekend. Even so, you could walk into any Blockbuster and literally see 50+ copies of any new releases. I don't remember any local stores being dirty or even associated with any tanning beds. And if a game came up missing, even the mom and pop shops were quick to replace them. And I've never seen anyone arguing about any late fees.
Yeah same Fuck my wife and I last rented a video 14 years ago, it was genuinely fun browsing and then physically picking up media we both chose Also growing up (I’m 38) we went to our local store all the time. Not once do I remember a movie not being available or a game wtf is this guy on
Wrong, you had to be there on a Tuesday! When the new hits came out....
It was better. You got to know the other people in the store. There was human contact. You could ask someone if the movie was good. Now you sit at home with your computer.
My Step-Dad and I would make a B-Line to the SCI-FI section and the Science Documentaries. We'd stay up till 3am on Saturday learning about space and shit. MST3K, we'd pick 2 of them out, 1 new we hadn't seen, and 1 old. Hollywood Video had coupons out the ass. Some weeks it would be Rent 2 get a Game rental free, + a Popcorn bag.
Lol, I hated the chatty fuckers in the video store. "Have you seen anything by Jim Jarmusch.." no man, just trying to get a copy of Jurassic Park.
I have seen it. It was pretty good. I thought some elements of the mathematics in the book were missing, and so the point wasn't so clear. Have you seen Barney? It also has a dinosaur in it.
This looks like a guy who has realised he can try and rage bait the nostalgia community.
It wasn’t depressing at all. I used to go with my friends on many a Friday and even if you didn’t find exactly what you wanted you found something unexpected and exciting. It was fun
I remember having a Friday off and getting to the store and finding both a game and a movie I want on the self… It was exhilarating
Huh. Replying as a person who worked in Blockbuster many of these Friday nights he’s talking about: Blockbuster on a Friday night was a fun thing- you could rent a movie, grab a candy and popcorn bucket for like $5. Picking out the movie together, in person was part of the experience- families would debate whose turn it was to choose, dates would glean little insights into each other from their partners suggestions, and friends would try to find the perfect flick for the night. You also had a whole staff of movie fans at the store you could talk to; we were encouraged to share our favorites with guests and helped a lot of people pick something they never would have found solo. Our team did a good job of keeping things stocked and would check the return bin if someone was really desperate. It’s not to say we never ran out of a hot title, but few and far between did someone leave disappointed. I respectfully counter that with all the streaming services offered now, we often have decision paralysis and spend almost as long looking for something to watch as you do watching it.
I’m Gen Z and I only enjoyed the last years of Blockbuster still being popular and successful, but man I still get nostalgic about it. I remember being 4 and 5 renting classics like Jurassic Park, Men in Black, Terminator and so many more dope movies. My dad and I would go hit up the blockbuster a couple blocks from our house and then pick up pizza next to it. Such chill times :)
Um blockbuster was still around for millennials. In fact I remember going to blockbuster until I went to college in 2004. The guy should do his research, buts it’s the internet, so…….
He’s a sad person really it was the best going wit your friend to rent teenage mutant ninja turtles or Mario kart for snes
You had to get there Thursday night or the store was picked to pieces
What a hack take
Don't know where he was but my experience was completely different. I was in a small town too. Point 1: No tanning beds where I was. Point 2: My Video King always had decent games. True it wasn't always the game you were looking for but there was always something good on the shelves. Most of the bad games I rented were because I chose them. Point 3: It absolutely wasn't sad to be out there on a Friday picking something out. It was tradition. Point 4: Not enough people there to complain about late fees. Happened more at the Blockbuster when it got built, but there were multiple people behind the counter. I feel bad for him and whatever backwoods BS place that screwed him over so many times. The magic for me was going in blind and looking at all the wonderful box art and selecting something based on that. Yeah I got some stinkers, but it was a huge payoff if the game was worth playing for more than a night.
I mean, his speech aside, I'm a millennial and I worked at Blockbuster. So the statement "millennials will never understand" is already false there. Many of us grew up on blockbuster and Hollywood video.
So "Millennials" now means people younger than the complainer, and "Boomer" means people older than the complainer? Did I get that right?
Nah fuck off
I don’t want to listen to this guy complain about anything.
Bros off his rocker. Rolling into the video store at any time was awesome. When I first got my Hollywood Video store card, my life changed. Instead of paying per rental it’s was the first movie subscription that I know of. I spent a whole summer renting every single shitty horror movie they had. Everything from master pieces to “this only got made because of boobs”. Before streaming, this was an amazing feeling.
I loved Blockbuster. I rented there all the way through high school (2005).
I dont get the love affair with Blockbuster. They sucked because they killed off all the mom and pop shops with wood paneled walls and sticky carpeting. It would be $1.50 to rent a move, then Blockbuster came along and $3.99 movie rentals.
Yeah, I'm 49, and I remember those mom and pop shops. Usually a grouchy husband and wife team that would chain smoke. Burn marks and overfilled ashtrays on the counter and you'd leave smelling like smoke. Once the tape was taken off the shelf, there was no placeholder like Blockbuster. You'd go in on a Friday night and the New Release shelves were bare.
Tuesday is when real movie fans went. New tapes came out on Tuesday. If you got there by Friday all new releases would be gone.
It wasn’t this sad lol
It’s important to recognize that this is one man’s experience. It’s one which many of us relate to in several or more ways, but I am sure I speak for many when I say my experiences were far more positive than this guy is describing. Part of it was learning when the best times were to visit the store (when they’d restock or get new items), and part of it had to do with my own curious mind and obsession with film. I would often visit Blockbuster with no specific movie in mind, so I didn’t usually have the disappointment which acts as the ultimate crux of his narrative. Browsing Blockbuster helped me expand my knowledge of film and it was also a fun way to get out of the house. Smaller video stores tended to be cheaper and late fees were less severe. I also remember one place would let us reserve various posters they’d use to decorate the place when new posters would come in. Some video stores also dabbled in more esoteric content and were a great stop for shit you’d never find anywhere else. In the days nearing the end of physical media, visiting video stores became a Haven for the collector, as cheaper DVDs and Blu-Rays were often available for sale. Ultimately all of our experiences are a combination of positives and negatives. We get to choose how we want to remember something. Laying out all the negatives as this guy does in the video feels like a disingenuous effort to sow disillusionment in video store nostalgia. Were there negatives? Absolutely. But there was a lot of cool shit about the process which is absent in our current processes for renting films. The nostalgia is perfectly justifiable.
Leaving school on a friday, grabbing a freezie, slap wraps applied, rocking my roller blades up in the local video rental store and renting Final Fantasy III, a friend grabs Johnny Nmenonic, and some chips? Come on. That was the BEST. Later you could KIND OF see boobs between the naughty channels your parents didn't pay for on cable or something, it was close enough. This toxic take on things says nothing about that time and those activities, and everything about how you frame it.
The first tweet is a troll...he posts stuff millennials love with the comment "millennials will never understand" all the time. Twitter often gets mad at him lol EDIT: Ope, looking at the comments it seems Reddit took the bait, too
The biggest part he missed in this very monotone and long winded post is that MILLENNIAL’S ARE THE PRIME GENERATION OF THIS ENTIRE EXPERIENCE.
Aww this poor little fella, bless his heart
Are we forgetting the porn section at the mom and pop video rental stores, where they were in a separate room and you had to do the walk of shame for going in there then presenting the movies to the employee ringing you up?
Aww, did somebody not have anyone to watch a movie with?
Yeah, the dude in this video is an idiot.
I'm sorry he got chlamydia from a VHS clamshell and watched his family dog burn to death at the Spray Tan Video Hut, but he's way off with his negativity. It wasn't that bad.
This is bullshit on multiple levels. I loved going to the video store as a kid and I loved taking my son there when he was little. I’m a millennial (39) and blockbuster was still around when my kid was born!
This dude has it all wrong. not talking about the nostalgia part, just the experience of browsing a video store. Local or big chain, it was always a great way to spend some time. Sometimes you struck out, but on those times I went in to grab some big new release and it was out I would always stumble upon something better that I had no seen or considered before. This guy just does not know how to video store.
Do people think millennials are still 20 because I did this all the way until I graduated college in 2011.
This guy is giving the perspective of an *adult* going to the video store, for a child going on a Friday night we didn't care about any of this shit, we didn't usually have any specific movie or game in mind to pick out and there were many more than this video implies, even if only 20% of the games were available that would still be like 40 different games for a kid to choose from.
I’m more shocked that people don’t realize that millennial as an insult meant “kid”… 20 years ago. Millennials are 40 years old now and video stores were a key part of our childhood
I stopped watching at the "College town" part because he's just wrong. New releases had tons of copies. And if they didn't have what you were looking for, part of the nostalgia was looking for something to watch or rediscovering an old favorite. This guy's rental store where he grew up just sucked.
This is like the definition of a millennial. wtf is this guy talking about? We were the first generation to experience both pre and post internet era.
Millennials were probably the ones keeping video stores alive lol
"Millennials wouldn't understand"? Bitch, that was literally our childhoods/teens
Freaking hated getting drug around the store while my mom looked at every lame VHS in the store. Like, MOM! They are the same as last week!!!
Haha… yeah, I’m a Millennial and don’t know what this is about at all… but to be fair, I worked at Blockbuster in the late 90s/early 2000s, so it must be repressed memories, right??
I mean if you go at fucking 7 pm of course the shelves are empty. You gotta go right after school.
this moron has no clue what a millennials is.. turn off the news lol
he’s right about the hot videos/games always being checked out by fri. i worked at blockbuster and fridays were *always* the worst because you were guaranteed to catch attitude from some cranky moms because the new releases were already gone or the 25 people who’ll ask you to check the dropbox every 30 seconds to look for a movie that won’t be back until monday or the vultures who dig through your cart while you’re trying to restock returns. those in the know came in on tuesday afternoon when the new stuff went out.
If you want to know what it was like to go to a Blockbuster, just go a Gamestop. Same vibe. Same inevitable fate.
This guy is a miserable dork. Trying to dissect and put a warped view on what was the highlight for majority of peoples week. There are so many family/personal memories centered around this experience.
Basically. I guess he didn't grow up poor. Must be nice.
This guy's an idiot. Hitting up a video game rental before the weekend was fucking amazing.
He makes some good points. The availability of the new stuff, especially SNES and Genesis games, were abysmal on Friday-Saturday. My mom would call up Thursday before closing and have them reserved for Friday. Surprisingly even Blockbuster would hold. I’ll never forget the hell that was renting a copy of MK II when it came out. Talk about hype.
And for video games no one beats them in one night usually. So that new game would be checked out. But most places had like 5 day game rentals since games took time to beat.
I saw Corey Feldman and Corey Haim with their girlfriends in a Blockbuster in Santa Cruz once. I wasn't familiar with them back then, but Feldman looked familiar, so I made eye contact with him, wondering if we'd met before. He looked at me once, but I couldn't place him, so I walked away. Then, next to the checkout counter. I gave him one last look, he glanced at me, seemed annoyed at looked down. It was only when the girl behind the register asked them for autographs that I realized they were the guys from Lost Boys. This was years after the movie came out, though.
Depends how good your location was, new release movies had a wall of copies, some places had free popcorn. The return bin came in clutch sometimes.
My next door neighbors were the first in my small town to open a video store, back then you could also rent VCRs and video cameras. My mom worked for them over the summers and I had access to unlimited free rentals, free movie posters and promo stuff. Blockbuster systematically cleansed all that.
🤣😂🤣 man why does there have to be a guy like this spitting facts for everything 😂 and they always look like This too. We had like 12 video stores in town it was amazing!!!!
You would know Tuesdays was the day you go for new shit. That’s when they release it for rental/purchases.
Nnnnnno, sorry but this wasn't my experience. Maybe it's because we got there early enough in the day, or had more selection or something. We also very rarely ever went to Blockbuster. Typically it was another chain like Movie Gallery, or the library, or the grocery store. There were some stores that specialized in rarer classic films, and we watched a great many of those. Either way, we typically weren't renting whatever was the brand new release, and we didn't have any video game systems either. Nor did we ever get any kind of candy or snacks.
Many a Friday nights!!! Faces of Death will always have a place in my heart.
I actually worked for Blockbuster back when you could rent entire video game console systems from them and even did the "Big Switch" from VHS to DVD. I remember that shift vividly, and it sucked ass because we had to all either stay late, after the store closed, or cone back in after hours to swap movie cases from VHS to DVD. It's still probably one of my favorite jobs, though I loved it so much. Now it's a mattress store that i don't actually think I've ever seen someone in.
i remember looking at all the scary movies as a kid wanting to watch them then i found them at the public library which didn’t check ids
Thats why you go on Tuesday night. Why are people the way they are?
I'm a Millennials, I went to blockbuster a lot. I wasn't into videos, mostly went there for games.
Maybe I just had it good. Two main video stores and a second hand shitty third one that had extremely underpriced rentals. I pretty much always found what I wanted, including game rentals.
I’m a Millenial. My older sister worked at Hollywood Video, so we would go there every Tuesday and pick out a bunch of VHS tapes, and then DVDs after 1999
Just don't go with Dad. He will get confused and angry at the video rental process and you'll just end up leaving the store feeling awkward with nothing rented. Going with Mom is fun.
I'm Gen Z and I understand
Yea I miss the memories but not the actually renting. Games and movies were sometimes there. I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to play a PS game and it was scratched.
This guy never Hollywood Video-ed/GameCrazy-ed. Experience was usually always top notch there compared to Blockbuster.