Ask Lemmy

I was in highschool and I begun to date my ex-girlfriend this year (she's now my wife).

Nonooonoonoonoono. People born in 2008 are NOT 18 years old! This was just a couple of years ago!

I was 18 in 2008 so this feels really weird because back then it felt like the year I was born was ages ago (it was in a different millennia though).

I was 21 in 2008. The cat in my profile pic, Oscar, was born in April that year, and I adopted her in June. She died of complications from kidney disease last July, at the age of 17. Time moves too fast.

Markets crashed, got laid off from a good job that I was only at for 9 months making decent money (they didn't want to let me go, but went by seniority), went on unemployment for like a year, tried taking care of a child that I wasn't ready for, played too much WoW during that time and almost ruined my marriage. Yeah, not great.

In 2008, Iron Man had just come out and blown everyone's minds. iPhones were still quite new, so was Facebook. Obama got elected and everyone was excited by the first black president, even here in Australia.

Lol, in the first part of 2008, I was obsessed with the new Smash Bros game that was about to come out. The marketing was drip feeding info day by day, and it was all working perfectly on me. Throughout those early months, I could tell you how many days until it released in the US.

I turned out not to like that game so much.

I was in Guangzhou, China.

I vaguely remember the hype around Bejing Olympics, but I never cared about sports so... eh... don't remember much of the actual thing, only the hype around it.

I was... um... 6 years old?

In 1st grade, public schools didn't allow my brother for not having a Guangzhou Hukou so we went to some privately-run paid one, which according to mom, it was worse than public schools.

We lived in some apartment in a... kinda... "slum" part of the city.

Parents was either working all the time or was looking for work all the time.

Maternal grandmother was at home to watch us.

No internet, no sure if because of our neighborhood not having it or because of money issues...

But we did have some paid subscription cable(?) tv thingy... so that was all the entertainment there was... a lot of um... I think kids cartoons? memory is kinda blurry.

So I'd walk to school with... usually grandmother, but sometimes, very rarely, one of my parents that somehow had free time. Probably dad because he didn't have a stable job... but I don't remember much.

No free lunch in schools, so you either paid for lunch or you went home for lunch...

I remember just walking home by myself, cuz grandma thought it was fine? Cuz nobody would kidnap me in broad daylight right? Right? (👀 mom told me about the supposed "lots of kidnappings" in China, idk how serious that actually is tho)

Its like 5 flights of stairs to the small apartment unit, I don't think it meets western building safety codes lol.

So I had lunch at home, then go back to school like approx 1 hour later.

Then finish the rest of the school day and go back home, usually someone was there to pick me up at dismissal. I remember mom always warning me to never trust a stranger that claims to be picking me up. Cuz apparantly there's a lot of kidnappers. That "stranger danger" thing terrified me lol

Don't think I ever remember hearing Cantonese (the lingua franca and "dialect" of Guangzhou) used in school, not by peers, no one.

Teachers had meter sticks to "displine" "misbehaving" students

The schools used blackboards and you write with chalk. There were no smartboards anywhere to be seen. No projectors.

All instruction just using this small student handbooks that each student had, and teacher wrote stuff on the blackboard.

I think summers we go back to our ancestral village? Dad and mom were from different vilages and I think usually I go to my mom's village, cuz that's where my maternal grandmother lives.

Mom told me that maternal grandfather took me to the stores and had ice cream... but I don't remember lol

In Guangzhou, I remember sometimes, my parents took us to the McDonalds near us, but its more like a "vibe" memory, don't remember much about the food or the taste of food, its over a decade ago. But I remember having ice cream.

I vaguely remember this one school trip... to idk where lol... all I remember was being on the bus and I think I threw up... car sickness lol... we didn't have a car and so I don't get used to it.

I think its either this year or 2009 that I had the incident of my older brother (5 years older than me for context, its not a fair fight due to age difference) fighting me then I ran away from home for a few hours... was so scary to be alone in the city for a few hours... still traumatized...

I remember the malls

I remember being at that store and asking my parents to buy stuff...

this one time I ask them to buy these board games so I can play with my brother... (yes that same brother that want to fight with me all the fucking time)

I remember the metro system... the platform safety door thing was so fascinating to me

that's all I remember on the top of my head right now. I think that one traumatic memory kinda casted a lot of the blurriness of the memory, and leaving there made it so much easier for my brain to just repress most of it...

Edit: Also I had zero friends... :( So yea I basically spent my early childhood with my sort of abusive older brother... 😭

I was a bit of a deadbeat, I had a reasonably ok job but I was living in a tiny flat and spent most of the money I earned on drink and drugs, didn't have a steady GF. I was into all sorts of extreme sports then and that led to a pretty serious biking accident requiring multiple trips to hospital. Was very lucky it wasn't fatal.

It was 2008 and that was the turning point.

Maybe due my brush with death? I started to turn my life around. I stopped smoking. Changed my scenery. Quit my dead end job after finding better one. Moved from the city to the countryside to be with my girlfrend then got married.

It's hard to think all of that would have happend if that tree hadn't been growing in that particular spot for me to crash into. Things could have gone very differently.

I was 29, single and back-packing in SE Asia, then Oz, working in dive bars, hostels and selling strawberries for beer money. It was a bizarre time in my life that I enjoyed tremendously.

"Why are you all concerned about boys? Have you heard the song Time to Pretend by MGMT? Why are you not concerned about the song Time to Pretend by MGMT? Do you not miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms????"

Enrolled in college older than most to escape only getting retail, part time job offers and the recession caused by financial institutions, get a stem degree to pursue an interest in mathematics and science, & improve myself and my community through education.

Happy birthday!

I was in high school and honestly having a great time. My friend group was pretty solid, I remember having a decent bunch of fun classes, and that was the first year I had a cell phone. Having a phone and a friend with a car meant that I was granted a lot more freedom.

My friend with the car would pick me up at 6am on the weekends and sometimes on school days and we'd go snowboarding, pushing each other to be better and to have fun. We did a lot together besides just that, and I spent a lot of time at her place, which was nice to get away from mine.

It was a good time :) I hope your teen years haven't been too fraught with all that is happening in the world and you're able to have your own freedoms and fun

The housing crisis and recession was in full swing, and my wife had to close her retail business as a consequence. Shitty times, but absolute bliss compared to today.

I believe I was with my husband then. Depends on time of year. I was with him, but not living with him until like February of that year. Cause December 07 is the anniversary things. So 20 years soon.

I was working then which was nice. Wish I could again.

Many happy returns, sorry you had to be born into this post 9/11 mess.

I was in college, in the process of discovering a lot of things. It was a very formative year for me and I don’t necessarily regret my choices but I wish I’d have had some more discipline during that time.

It's when I went from a freelance perpetually broke dork to a full time and well paid dork with a career. That's also the year I met my now GF and mother of my children.

Happy Birthday.

Only one person mentioned Obama, so I'll put it in.

2008 was only 40 years after MLK was killed, so you had a lot of people who'd seen him when he was alive. I knew people who didn't want to watch on election night because they were so fraught. They couldn't even believe he'd gotten as far as he had.

I was working in downtown Brooklyn, in an area with a lot of Black people. The most you saw was the occasional poster, and he was usually part of a group with MLK, Malcolm X, and other icons. I never saw any of the giant flags that Trump lovers fly.

This is another thing I noticed. In the Bush years you'd see a lot of skulls in fashion; in the Obama years there were more peace signs. That's my personal experience in NYC, so take it with a grain of salt.

That month I left active duty military after 11 years, moved my family, and got licensed in my home state to do my job. I had prepared quite a bit and had family help, but it was still a rough life transition for all of us.

By that spring when everything started to settle down and go a bit smoother, the housing crisis set in. Everything got more expensive quickly. I remember worrying I wouldn't be able to afford fuel for my long commute. I was terrified I wouldn't be able to support my family.

Somehow we held it all together, but it was a stressful fucking year. Despite all I never regretted leaving the military...it was either that or go back (again) to secure Halliburton's oil interests in Iraq.

Oh wow! Has. It ben that long already? In 2008 I had just graduated from software engineering and started my first career job. It took me months before I found a job because of the economic crash. And when I found one, the pay was shit. Cost of living wasn't as high though so it was ok.

The first half of 2008 was okay. I was a year into having my own place, was dating a lot, and traveling multiple times a year. Going on your first solo vacations as a young adult is a pretty dang cool thing.

I was still new in my career and was building my adult life. I had a job lined up in Chicago, but it was with a financial company, and the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman, and the whole economy got the offer pulled that September.

I remember being very excited for the election. I actually got to go see Michelle Obama give a speech in the jazz district here in Kansas City, and the line to see Barack Obama speak at his Liberty Memorial campaign stop was so long they had to cut it off for security reasons. We sat on one of the hills and listened to the speech, and he was elected by a large margin.

In hindsight, 2008 was the last year I had any real hope for the future.

Obama was supposed to be the Anti-Dubya, but he turned out to be a conservative fascist too. The banks were rewarded with bailouts and bonuses for crashing the economy, and to this day, only one person's gone to prison for it. I now just assume each new year will be incrementally worse than the last, which while bad for my mental health, has been great for my financial planning.

I was still a high-school student. Got baptized and confirmed in 2008. Bought an iMac from the gift money and became a bit of an Apple fanboy for a while. I've since left the church and no longer like Apple.

In college, watching the industry I was getting a degree in tank (and many others). I chose the field in part because of historically good job stability and 95%+ job placement after college. That all evaporated. Folks who should have been retiring were having to work longer, leaving no room for fresh college grads.

I hope this AI crap resolves down to a more stable level. I'm concerned the folks in college now will have it even worse between another generational bubble working it's way through and now AI making things more "efficient" so fewer humans are perceived as necessary.

My first child was born that year. 🥲

2000-2013 were the best years of my life. Don’t get me wrong things were really good before 2000 for me but those 13 years were the best.

My wife and I had great jobs that gave us everything. Good money, fun work, great work life balance. Also we loved were we lived. Everything was great. We enjoyed our kid playing sports, Video Games were really taking off, we did an annual summer vacation to the Outer Banks of NC.

The three of us had really good circle of friends.

Things were just bliss.

Many old chaps ITT, heheh. I was 18 in 2008, graduating high school. Happy birthday OP.

What was it like ? lots of Halo3, lots of wanking,... lots of feeling lost too, as I was approaching the moment I had to make choices for myself.
It's hard to give a rundown really, as my grip on the world was waaay less firm than it is now, and I barely knew what was going on.
In mainland France we could consider ourselves blessed -but little did I know, not far from us, the Arab Spring was about to mount like mayonnaise. The US were still widely thought to be a bastion of democracy (or was it just my youthful naïveté?), Abe Shinzo had not been murdered yet and Iron Man had just released. Maybe they'll make more of these ? -political assassinations, I mean. Here's to hoping 🥂

The east coast had a HUGE snowstorm. I was a kid. I remember building tunnels and igloos and having snowball fights with my siblings and friends. My younger brother was undergoing chemo. My parents were stressed about money. Obama won the presidential election and I cried, not understanding politics but only knowing that Obama was the option my parents didn't vote for.

I was in middle school, just discovering retro game collecting. I got tons I'd NES, SNES, and N64 games for pennies on the dollar, compared to today. It was a terrible time in terms of school, but a wonderful time in terms of exploring my hobbies.

I had just met my best friend at the time. Finding someone with as much anxiety as me was helpful.

I was in college for my second year, prior year I had tried to work full time but work dicked me over thinking since I had "3 days off" I could work more the other days. Those three days were for classes, Wednesday for doing classwork for Thursday. I worked my ass off to ensure I had a schedule work could more easily schedule around then they pulled this crap. I had a breakdown at work and promptly put my two weeks notice in. Time goes on and work dries up due to 2008 so finding part time work willing to work around your schedule was hard when you had families who needed ANYTHING were going for as many hours as possible.

I still had a decent gaming computer, ate modestly well, and had plenty of time for course work with leisure time. Though I was lonely a lot, I started becoming a more social creature in college. It was an awakening of me realizing how much trauma I was carrying, how hard I was to live with, my political views and beliefs hitting the asphalt, and many other things. I was holding on for deal life just trying to figure myself out while also going to college.

In that time I wish I had stayed in touch with a sister of mine more for assistance. We've reconnected after college and she learned how rough it was for me that she would have offered help in just food on occasion if she could. The financial collapse didn't really touch me, I was too busy surviving mentally to worry about it much. But the after effects lasted long enough that they were still felt by me out of college.

I was basically in a crisis of self the entire time, realizing I couldn't go on with how I was raised, it was wrong, and I needed to change but that was very difficult.

Man, 18 years, it's wild of me to think of what I've lived through before people your age were born. Some good, a lot bad. How I was unguided because my parent's generation were just "tough, deal with it!" types. Why when I meet younger folks who have questions I answer them and try to provide my experience to see if it helps them. Yall really do need it in these trying times.

Part whirlwind, part most stability I've experienced in my life, and part adjusting to a new norm.

My life in the mid 00's was... Interesting. Mrs Canopyflyer and I met in 2004, got married in 2005, moved 400 miles for her job in 2006 and baby #1 was born in 2007.

So by 2008 I was getting used to:

1. Being a newish husband.

2. Being in a completely new city where I knew no one.

3. Being a new father.

I entered undergrad. My dad had a massive accident. I turned 18 and in retrospect, I started feeling suicidal that year. Yeah, overall, it was a pretty bad year for me.

I was 15 so pretty awkward. Might have started to do more serious exams that would determine whether I went on to higher ed. Main concerns would be getting served in old man pubs underage, getting invited to as many parties as possible despite being moderately antisocial, and indulging in any contraband I could get my hands on.

January 2008 I was failing as a student, failing to work enough to support myself, in debt to my roommate and sliding my way towards a stint of homelessness that thankfully would only last the summer.

I was in 8th grade, so it was much better than 2007. My 7th grade teacher liked the popular kids more and absolutely couldn't stand me, but my 8th grade teacher liked our outcast group more and vibed with me. She was an older teacher, so more skilled, but also I think their generation had a different perspective on weirdness. That was the first year I made online friends. My parents got through the crisis unscathed. Both rented, so no house lost, and neither lost their job. It definitely instilled the belief that I would graduate high school and fail to get a job, which never faded through high school. I would say that time reinforced the messages I received from the Iraq War era, that America was in decline and the old narratives are now false.

I remember two things from the year 2008. A SpongeBob themed birthday cake, and my cousin being an infant at the time.

I was probably playing on that old Nintendo I borrowed from someone. It was old even back then. I was not quite on the internet yet I think, might have been playing Miniclip flashgames, found out Newgrounds, and discovered things that would have been better if not.

I wanted AI allies in Starcraft, so I rigged together what would look like allies, from what limited things I can do with the scenario editor.

I had all sorts of great ideas, but I also started to become more and more aware that I had to do something. I was a hyper kid that could not sit still, and caused problems all the time.

They claimed I was suicidal, so I spent time waiting in the cold to be sent over a bus to the capital city, so they could pump me full of drugs and break me, and I would never be the same since.

I finished high school in spring which was a true blessing. I had always been a good student (4th best in my year) but got bullied for being a nerd.

Over the summer, I worked as a programmer for a small game studio, making a Nintendo DS game that got cancelled by the publisher on the day we sent in the last release candidate because they finally noticed that their idea was crap and they should have accepted the changes we had proposed. Didn't matter, I had already been paid and got a lot of experience out of it.

In October, I started university which was a great chance to make new friends. By now I've lost contact with most of them but some are still around and I appreciate them a lot. I was lucky enough to already live close to the university so I could stay at my parents' house.

Through all of this, I was in the middle of my first serious relationship. My partner moved from across the country to a town just an hour away from me. Being able to see each other more often was amazing but at the same time it made things more complicated. We were constantly struggling with aligning our schedules, couldn't agree at whose place we should meet and got annoyed when one wanted to meet friends on a day the other would be free. We broke up in 2009 but we're still good friends.

It was pretty much the peak of a community that I'm still part of today. Apart from long online discussions, we met twice a year for community events with about 60-80 guests who decided that it's our turn to define what being a grown-up means. These events still exist (the last one was just a few weeks ago) but they've gotten smaller and some of that chaotic creativity has been lost forever.

Overall, 2008 may have been the start of one of the best sections of my life. I've never had more active friendships at the same time, before or after. I had many of the perks of being an adult without most of the drawbacks. I earned a bit of money and could keep most of it because university is cheap in my country and I didn't have to pay rent. If I had the chance (and could take a few people that I met later with me), I would probably go back.