20 People Share Their “I Was Into It Before It Was Cool” Stories

Have you ever suddenly woken up and discovered that the thing you really liked but no one really knows about has blown up into a huge sensation? Maybe you were going to Lady Gaga concerts before she became a pop superstar. Or maybe you were always watching movies with a certain actor that now everyone seems to recognize and praise. Were you a gaming pioneer or obsessed with craft beer?

On Reddit, people are talking about the things they were into before they were “cool”—and cover everything from snowboarding to memes. It can feel kind of unfair to have people catch onto your special thing, but that just means you have visionary taste!

1.

“Gmail. 2004-ish? when it was invite only. my friend had a small amount of invites.” — Replicaindigo

2. 

“I worked for a movie theater chain in 1996, and my boss got a VHS copy of ‘Jesus vs Santa Claus’ at some industry event. We watched that video a dozen times and laughed our asses off. About 6 months later South Park debuted on Comedy Central and we were very excited to see it had been picked up.” — fishtankbabe

3. 

“Spotify…I remember I had to use a vpn to use it in my country.” — awesomeace18

4. 

“Snowboarding, you couldn’t even bring them to resorts. 1983.” — Dendad1218

5. 

“Home computing. I started in 1976.” — BadMotherFolklore

6. 

“Bitcoin. Alt coins didn’t exist when I got started with it. Mandatory disclaimer: no I’m not a millionaire now.” — biinjo

7. 

“I had a friend in high school ask me in math class one day if I wanted to go to a concert with her that night. Her sister had extra tickets and she thought I’d want to go. It was a New Kids on the Block comeback tour and I said sure why not, my mom didn’t mind me going. We sat around chatting before the show and the opening act was some woman who appeared to be drunk but her music was really good! Nobody had ever heard of her and she only did a few songs but her music was a total ear worm that was hard to get rid of once it took hold. Went home that night and googled her single ‘Just Dance’ and downloaded it immediately. And that’s how I discovered Lady Gaga.” — viobby

8. 

“The How to Train Your Dragon books. Unfortunately they’re still not cool yet.” — DragonLance11

9. 

“Listening to Nirvana’s “Blew” song on student radio (NZ) in 1989 and thinking these guys are good.” — broughtonline

10. 

“I first saw The Simpsons when it was a sketch on The Tracy Ullman Show, and thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I was ecstatic when I learned they were making a full cartoon of it. I watched it religiously up until about season fifteen or sixteen before I finally switched to every once in a while like we all eventually did.” — Roland_T_Flakfeizer