11 outdated technology moments from 'Friends' on its 22nd anniversary

Four are voicemail-related. Sorry not sorry.
 By 
Sophie Hirsh
 on 
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Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Friends premiered on Sept. 22, 1994 – that's 22 years, four U.S. presidents and 12 iPhone generations ago.

Binging the sitcom today on Netflix is sometimes even funnier than it was back then, because the technology is so laughably outdated.

Here are 11 of our favorite antiquated tech moments from the 22-year-old show. (Yes, the first four are voicemail-related.)


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1. Answering machine blunders

Monica thought she was leaving Richard a slightly embarrassing voicemail, but it turned out she was accidentally changing his outgoing message. 1990s phone wizardry.

2. Drunken voicemails

Ross checked his voicemails from Rachel's apartment – including a drunk message from Rachel revealing her feelings for Ross. In 2016, even if you did leave someone a drunk voicemail, they would either check it first thing in the morning (after rolling their eyes) or straight up ignore it.

3. Goofy outgoing messages

"We will, we will, call you back!"

4. Hanging up when a call goes to voicemail

Hanging up when a call goes to voicemail today means the person will get a notification that you called – but in the '90s, it was pretty rare that they'd ever even find out you called.

5. Holding for customer service

Phoebe spent a whole day at Monica and Rachel's apartment on hold with a customer service line. With an iPhone and some AirPods, you can now go about your day while on hold and not be confined to the short distance a landline reaches – and even better, many companies have online customer support.

6. Cookbooks

Rachel accidentally combined the recipes for an English trifle and a Shepherd's pie because two pages in a cookbook got stuck together – something that would never happen in the age of numerous cooking websites and TV shows.

7. Early laptops

"We'll put their names in bold with different fonts and I can use different colors for each column," is a true sentence Chandler Bing said about his new laptop.

8. Internet death rumors

Ross and Chandler spread some sneaky misinformation about each other on their college alumni website. It went a little far and Chandler made everyone believe that Ross was killed in a blimp accident. With today's social media, there's no way a rumor like that wouldn't be shot down immediately.

9. Writing down phone messages

Ross took down a phone message when a guy Rachel met at a bar called for her. Rachel was understandably angry when she found out Ross never gave her the message – something that would have been avoided in 2016, when the guy would have likely just texted Rachel.

10. Video chatting

Monica's rich boyfriend Pete had an early iteration of FaceTime built into his wall – very advanced back in the '90s. Today, video chatting is a pretty standard form of communication.

11. Realizing how important the internet is

In 2016, we all already know.

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Sophie Hirsh

Sophie was a Viral Content Intern for the Watercooler channel. More writing and other stuff by Sophie can be found at www.sophiehirsh.com.

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