11. Flash Mobs.
“One of my favourite ways to waste time is looking up really old flash mobs, not even necessarily big or famous flash mobs but ones from reeeally early on. The astonishment on spectators’ faces is priceless.
I think one of my favourites is Antwerp central station to Do Re Mi from The Sound Of Music and it’s so great because the mob was DEEP-planted within the station audience, reacting with shock and awe for almost all the way through the song and then suddenly busting perfectly into the choreographed moves because they were in on it all along. Love it.” –gypped1101
12. Virtual Pets, or, if your family could afford it, name brand Tamagotchis.
“Worked at a store in 90s as a buyer. We ordered loads waited months for those precious tamagotchis to arrive, as they were out of stock everywhere, such was the demand. I swear THE EXACT DAY we received our supply, the craze just ended. We were stuck with 100s of the fuckers and just couldn’t sell them.” –pbetc
13. Hoverboards.
They flopped because “they kept bursting into flames.” That’ll do it –HeckingA
14. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world: milk.
“In New Zealand we had this company release a chocolate milk. People went fucking bonkers. It was in the news every day, people lined up outside grocery stores to get it, mass shortages everywhere. About 2 weeks in it just……..stopped.
The milks still there, people just gave up on the craze seemingly overnight. It was weird.
The milk is good, as good as chocolate milk can be I guess.” –neeeeonbelly
15. Taylor Lautner. 🙁
“Remember when Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift briefly dated in 2009? That was peak 2009.” –SinfullySinless
16. Silly Bandz.
“I bought a packet that claimed to be animals but turned out to be Catholic symbols like doves, crosses, etc. I just wanted a giraffe.” –TileFloor
17. The Harlem Shake.
“When news reporters and business execs did it you knew that humanity is fucked.” –FartingBob
18. Saying “Waaaaazzzzzzuppp??!”
“I saw someone make that reference recently and everyone’s response was “that movie was classic.” As the only person who seemingly remembered it when it was a commercial, I instantly aged 100 years and died.” –CampbellsChunkyCyst
19. Magic Eye Books.
“I don’t think there was ever a time I looked in a Magic Eye book and saw what I was supposed to see. But I had to pretend I did, so the other kids wouldn’t think I was dumb.” –AggravatingCupcake0
20. Lisa Frank.
“Those Lisa Frank trapper keepers covered with brightly colored, ultra flamboyant, psychedelic fever dream inspired illustrations of dolphins, unicorns, rainbows, etc. They were so in your face that you pretty much had to respect them no matter what your attitude towards that kind of art was.
I remember a time when it seemed like virtually every girl in elementary school had one of them.” –Prank_Owl
21. The Ice Bucket Challenge (which actually worked).
“The Ice Bucket Challenge actually pulled in a ton more money for the ALS Association than they normally would get in a given year. All of the money went to research, and, since then, some breakthroughs into the causes of ALS have been discovered as a direct result of all that extra cash.
So, yeah, while it was EVERYWHERE for a while, this one was actually a good one that hopefully will lead to better treatments and maybe even potential cures for various causes of ALS. (My mom died from ALS the year before the Ice Bucket Challenge happened, so I paid pretty close attention to it.)” –BlackWidow1414
h/t Reddit: r/AskReddit