• TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Not even 20 years ago smart phones and the internet weren’t ubiquitous. I’m only 35 but even I remember personal stories about bar disagreements where we just simply couldn’t use our phones to search the net. Because all they were capable of is dialing a number and Snake.

    • uid0gid0@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Way back in the 1950s some guy had the same observation you did. He came up with an idea for a book that would solve disputes over trivia by bar patrons. 70 years later the Guinness Book of World Records has over 22,000 entries in their database.

      • Arielcorn@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        began as an idea conceived by British engineer and industrialist Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, to solve trivia questions among bar patrons. During the early 1950s Beaver was involved in a dispute during a shooting party about the fastest game bird in Europe; however, the answer could not be found in any bird reference book.

        Wow. That guy sure was serious about bird trivia!

    • 100_kg_90_de_belin @feddit.it
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      11 months ago

      When we kids there would always be someone who would rush home to look stuff up on the encyclopedia and get back with the results

    • Dutczar@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      I read that as “capable of dialing Snake”…

      Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAKE! DO HUMMINGBIRDS HAVE FEET?

    • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I’m around the same age and I’m pretty sure we had Google on our phones by the time we could drink. That was the in between time where they still had buttons, but they had browsers and colorful screens. First iPhone released in 07. We were pretty much the first ones to have ‘smartish’ phones, though, so some people definitely still had snake bricks.

      I think most people also still weren’t used to having the world’s knowledge in their pockets and would forget that Google was even there, too. It’s crazy how easily urban legends and false rumors spread around back then, before everybody knew how to fact check. I remember some particularly interesting ones about Marilyn Manson and Lil Bow Wow.

        • froh42@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I was legally allowed to drink beer in 1985 with 16. I had my first mobile phone in 1997 or so.

          Yeah, fuck, I’m old.

          But I definitely had bar trivia discussions before I was online.

        • TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Exactly. Our legal drinking age is 18, but we were binge drinking every Friday from the age of 15. Not one bartender gives a shit here. At least back in the day. That’s 2003-2004.