White Pages was home # listings. Yellow Pages was business listings.
I was there...
Submitted 3 weeks ago by LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone to memes@sopuli.xyz
https://piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone/posts/Nz/v3/Nzv3hytjWW5NJ5O.jpg
Comments
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
All these damn kids all over the lawn.
FluorineBalloon@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Having just read the thread about commercial paper shredding, your comment took my mind to a weird place.
Son_of_Macha@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
You were asked if you wanted to be listed or not.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Depends on the country.
In Australia you had to pay an extra fee to not be placed on there. Fuck you Telstra.daggermoon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve never heard an Aussie say anything positive about Telstra.
Typotyper@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Ditto for Canada
blackbrook@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Ditto in US. It was at least an opt out thing and referred to as getting an “unlisted number”, I can’t recall if there was a charge to do it.
RedC@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Ok but your phone number wasnt in the yellow pages, that was for businesses. Your number woulda been listed in the white pages
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
And blue for government.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Uhhhhhh, no we weren’t. It cost extra to be unlisted, so most of us just lived with it. But there was a loophole. You could tell them what name you wanted listed, and they wouldn’t do any verification. I still get mail for “Rusty Shacklesord.” They misheard me when I got listed, and hell, I wasn’t going to correct them. Whenever I get a call or mail for Mr. Shacklesord, I know it’s bullshit and I can do whatever I want to the asshole.
Hupf@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
That name sounds like a Power Rangers villain.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Yes, but even then it was generally only true for the remaining fixed landline phones. Felt just like a public knowledge part of your address, like putting your name on the doorbell button.
To be generally valid for mobile phones you probably would have to go back another 10 years.
Those truely were still different times, also online.
I even remember posting my mail address to a public register at the end of the 90s to distribute the public part of my pgp key…nickiwest@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It was fine to have my landline listed, because I didn’t have it with me in my pocket all day.
I would not want my cell number to be published. Mostly because I already get enough spam messages.
Candice_the_elephant@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The yellow pages only had businesses. It was the big white book that had all the people’s numbers in it. It also had addresses O.o
kalpol@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
But you had to really watch out for the red and blue pages… Bring me rrrred PAGES!
notsosure@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The reach of a printed phone book is obviously very limited, if compared to the globally accessibility of only data.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
They already digitized the books and put them online in searchable databases 30 years ago.
Even with reverse number search (which my socially awkward self loved back then).
So this argument doesn’t hold.notsosure@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It does over here and if you are older than 60.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
My mom saves up all her junk mail, and takes it to a neighborhood shredding event 2 or 3 times a year. She gets distressed if she misses it. She doesn’t understand why I just toss it all away.
I’ve asked her why she thinks her junk mail address is so valuable, and she’s afraid they will fall into the wrong hands. I’ve explained to her that if it’s on junk mail, it’s already out there being sold. It’s just her name and address, it’s a public record.
I get why she’d want to shred stuff with her SS# on it, but another AARP solicitation?
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Be a good child now and buy your mom a shredder
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
She’s got one, but she thinks the trucks will shred better, and the shreds wont be in our trash where people will know where they came from.
I should note that my mother lives in a gated, active adult community, and there is literally ZERO crime on her neighborhood. If someone started going through someone else’s trash, you’d have a half a dozen busybodies demanding to know what you’re up to.
CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I’m in the habit of shredding everything.
a) It’s so fun to watch a stack of mailers turn into confetti
b) Deniability. If I only shred important documents, then all my shredded trash is now important. If I shred everything, nobody knows how much of it is important.
Mostly A though. I’m not yet worried about someone trying to reconstruct my shredded trash.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Very paranoid. I like it.
piccolo@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I just gathering it throughout the year and burn it in winter. Atleast i get some value from all the junk mail.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I had a close friend with a super long ranch home, with a big open basement under the entire thing. He collected old phone books from all of his friends and anywhere he could get them, and stacked up at the end, and we would target shoot pellet guns and .22s into them. They made a perfect backstop for light gauges like that.
He was also a jeweler, and had his jewelery bench down there, so I would hang out and keep him company while he worked, and I put in a LOT of shooting hours. Became a pretty good shot.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Back then people weren’t so fixated on each other’s business. After 2001, that changed pretty dramatically
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I was very excited when my name, Johnson,Navin R appeared in the phone book. “Things are going to start happening to me now.”
rageagainstmachines@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Would they though? I think “kids today” are probably a lot less privacy conscious having grown up in an internet with social media and other privacy invasive technologies natively.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
You could opt-out of those. And it was pretty reliable to do so.
DacoTaco@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This. Ive known people that were just out of abusive relationships and kept their information hidden for that reason, including the white pages
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Let your fingers do the walking!
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
After I left one school to go to a vo-tech, I looked up the phone number for a girl I liked in the previous school who turned me down for a date. It was the only time I had ever asked a girl out. I had to go through 6 numbers before I found her, we ended up dating for three years.
Mongostein@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I had a cell phone and ditched my landline in 2003. Those weren’t listed. Gotta go back 3 more years! (For me anyway)
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Back then the average person was a lot less likely to piss someone off who knew their name and was willing to target them
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Unless your name was Sarah Connor, of course.
albbi@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
You’d think so, but then Facebook came around and people would write all sorts of crap with their names attached.
kirkoman@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The yellow one was for businesses. Residential phone numbers and often addresses where in the white book.
kirkoman@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
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MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Samsonite! I was close.
TheBat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
All of this could’ve been avoided had Sarah asked her roommate to get phone line in her name.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Bess Motta was pretty hot.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
In smaller areas they’d make the yellow book and white book the same book to save on binding and distribution. I remember back in the very early 2000’s my rural county still got the 400+ page yellow pages delivered every year.
MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I think in the UK it was just yellow with “The Yellow Pages”, the actual name of the book itself and the company in charge of it. I know it eventually became just businesses but I’m sure it was more than that before the millennium. Now it’s just a business ratings website just called “Yell”.
titanicx@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
You used to make pretty good money being able to deliver the phone books too when they came out. It’s funny how people think the gig economy is new when we are doing everything we could to make money anyway possible. From delivering newspapers to phone books to door to door sales for advertising businesses in the phone book.
MrQuallzin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Legitimate question, why do people keep typing “where” instead of “were”? Many typos are understandable where letters that are next to each other accidentally get swapped, but you have to go out of your way to put the h in there.
Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They do it to annoy you. Just you.
borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Probably they’re swiping on a phone keyboard and autocorrect fucked them, or they’re using text to speech and the diction fucked up and they didn’t proofread it.
far_university1990@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
If type like sound in head, where and were same. And type learned enough not think about every letter.
blackbrook@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
I can’t speak for others, and I’m not sure I ever make that particular typo (espec swipe typing on phone), but I’ve noticed that I sometimes make typos that don’t particularly make sense to me… I’ll write a similar word that I would never actually confuse with the word I wanted…is not a homophone, is not a letter adjacency typo. I think the brain just works differently than we expect sometimes…
Ronan@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Depends on where you are from I guess, there were many countries that used yellow pages for residential.
digger@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Came here to day this… Because I’m old.