This troper's grandfather once scoffed at cell phones on the grounds that "only rich idiots will buy them". Flash forward ten years, and this troper has a cell because her plan makes it cheaper than a land line.

Tropers/DesertDragon thought the same about laptops originally, then bought one in 2009 because it was cheaper than a desktop. In both cases, it helps that portable electronics have come way down in price over the past ten years. The cell phone I paid $75 for in 2003 would be found in a dollar store today, but that's a different trope.

This troper is never allowed to forget that in the mid-nineties he explained at length to his friends during a trailer of a movie that this whole 'internet' thing would never catch on, that no one would look up a MOVIE on the internet. Yes this troper feels appropriately stupid when he remembers it.

Me in 1999: "Come on, mom! Don't buy one of those new-fangled DVD players! They are just a fad, they'll never last! Be smart and stick with our VHS player!"

To be fair, DVD players came ''way'' down in price between then and 2001-02, so you might've actually saved her some money with that advice.

Plus [=DVDs=] hadn't developed a unified format back then. Nothing stopping you from being Betamaxed in a year time...

My Mother: "Music Videos? Who in God's name would want to watch music???" Fast forward fifteen years...

Yo dog, I respect you, imma let you finish, but This Troper has the best video of all time! OF ALL TIME!

YMMV, this troper isn't fond of them.

I distinctly remember when I was twelve, back in the mid 90's, thinking something like, "You know what would be cool? A credit card that lets you draw money directly out of your bank account. That way, you wouldn't have to deal with carrying around cash all the time."

Given that the concept of the debit card has existed since at least ''1987''...

And it's always been possible to use your credit card to withdraw money from an ATM. The interest rate isn't pretty, but it's an option.

This troper's father resisted getting cable in the 1980s because "No one would pay to watch TV." This changed when the family moved to an area with spotty reception.

This guy inverted it: I was watching an [=XFL=] game on TV with my dad and cousin. Our conversation played out like this: #QUOTE#'''Me''': ''This idea seems stupid. I don't think it will last.'' #QUOTE#'''Dad''': ''I think it will. Millions of people watch wrestling; millions of people watch football. There's no reason this won't succeed.'' #QUOTE#'''Cousin''': ''Yeah, that Vince [=McMahon=] is a heck of a businessman. He thought this through, it'll succeed.''

Netbooks: All the low-end-processor-and-storage of a UMPC, combined with all the too-big-to-fit-in-your-pocket of a full-size laptop. And yet so many people seem to think they're cool. Even Google and Microsoft. Jerks.

To this day my mother regrets not having bought stock in Ben & Jerry's at the original IPO in the mid-80s.

Twice this has happened to this troper. When she was seven, a friend saw her reading a book and asked her what kind of crazy loser would read something called ''HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone''? She also remembers seeing a book advertised in a magazine in 2005. The plot seemed silly: who would read a book about a vampire thirsting for a high school girl? It was called ''Literature/{{Twilight}}''. Enough said.

Same thing happened to me with Harry Potter when I was younger. Got ''HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone'' as my birthday present and what did I think of it?: "Meh, it's just like any other simplified fantasy tale and the only reason people are reading it, is because it's so ''in''. A couple of months, and no-one will remember it anymore..." And now take a guess, what's one of my favourite book series of all time.

Several instances when this troper looked over some promos of animated shows/films that haven't been released yet, which include PhineasAndFerb, CloudyWithAChanceOfMeatballs, and {{Up}}.

This Troper was in junior high when boys started wearing saggy pants that showed their underwear. She thought "Ugh! I'll be so glad when this fad is over with!" This Troper just turned 31 and the fad has only recently died, and only because a law was made against them!

This troper thought Apple products would never catch on and would always be restricted to the multimedia/graphics niche, but this was on the Mac OS 9 days.

Also, for the same troper: Linux when he heard of it back in 2001. "But it's just a hacker OS and no serious business will use it!".

This troper is a huge action game fan, so when God of War came out and all the reviews said it has taken its place as the 3rd king of action games next to Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry series, I was ecstatic. Then I looked at online videos and I didn't think the gameplay looked very fun, but I guessed something later in the game would be worth it. So I rented it, and tried it out, and I was absolutely confused how anyone could consider this a good action game. The gameplay was beyond bland, there were few enemy variations, the combat system was simplistic, and the character was a total asshole who blames everyone for his problems, even when they were his own fault. My exact thoughts were "Well, this'll never get popular, that's for sure, I have no clue what the reviewers were smoking." Fast forward to now. GoW1 was well liked, GoW2 was almost universally loved, and GoW3 is currently one of the most anticipated games of all time. Guess not everyone is looking for gameplay when they think 'action games'

My clarinet teacher told me a little story like this once. When he was (much) younger, one of his friends suggested they go and see some new band called TheBeatles. They decided against it, they didn't think they'd be any good...

He wasn't alone.

My great-grandfather was once approached by one Henry Block with an idea for a financial services company to "do people's taxes for them". He scoffed, of course. Yeah....

This troper, prior to the release of the {{Wii}} and {{PlayStation 3}}, thought the [=PS3=] would outsell because of the Sony name.

In junior high, this troper proposed the idea to my friends of a sketch comedy show that we would film. One of my friends shot me down because there would be no way for people to watch it. Two years later, [YouTube] was founded.

I myself was wayyy too young to even remember it, but I've been told that my brother and my uncle were talking about FinalFantasy back in the mid 90's and my uncle said: "A story based fantasy game with turn-based fight system from a run-down japanese gaming company? Oh boy, it will never become popular. Video games are made, so that the players can kick ass. If anyone would want to concentrate on a story, they'd probably read a book instead of playing..." Yeah, and seen that the thirteenth FinalFantasy game was released few months ago, you can all see how that one went. Also, my brother has confessed, that he thought that WorldOfWarcraft will never catch on, because it completely broke the original {{Warcraft}} strategy-game style. "I mean, a 3D version of Warcraft, where you will control only one hero? I honestly thought that no-one will ever play it."

Dude, an offical Disney/Final Fantasy crossover game? What the hell were both companies smoking? Not even a genius could pull it-''damn''. How the hell did ''that'' work out to be so awesome?

In 1989 when the Geo Prizm sedan and hatchback were launched, the hatch quickly became my favorite "regular" car. And I wondered why on earth ''anyone'' would buy the bland, boxy sedan when the hatch was ''so'' much sleeker, with added functionality to boot (sorry...). The next redesign went sedan-only as part of the 10-year near-total disappearance of hatchbacks from the American market.

Me, about ten years ago: "Who the hell wants to watch a singing competition?"

This troper thought it wouldn't catch on for a different reason. He expected that everyone would turn in for the bad auditions but stop watching once they left and the good ones stayed on. I have no faith in television viewers as you can see.

Kids. Why, back in the day they had the TheGongShow. Why'd they call it that? Because it was a talent competition in which the judges could interrupt your performance to throw you out on your ass, and they did so by ringing a giant gong. That's right, Simon Cowell and his post-performance razzing is but a pale imitation. Back in the day, they made the symbol of the judges saying "YOU SUCK GET OFF THE STAGE" into the NAME OF THE SHOW!

This troper was a gamer when, in his last year of college, this new game came out that '''EVERYONE''' was playing, and they tried to get him into it. I refused, liking the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, even when they pointed out that one part of the new game seemed to specialize in psychic powers, which have always been my favorite. That game? MagicTheGathering. Cue FacePalm as we all say 'WhatAnIdiot!'

So back in the 90s when mp3 trading was done over ftp and newsgroups, and maybe a web site if you knew some rich jerk who could afford the bandwidth, some silly program called Napster comes out. And I said that it wouldn't work, because if it made file sharing too easy, then everyone would do it, and the music companies would just sue everybody until it stopped. Well, I got it right except for the "until it stopped" part.

This troper thought that the original [=iMac=] having no floppy drive was one of the dumbest ideas a computer manufacturer had ever pulled off. Admittedly, it was a bit early, as flash drives were expensive and CD burners were not standard-- but with those technologies having come into play, good luck finding a computer with a floppy drive now.

If this troper ever gets a hold of a time machine, he wants to go back in time and tell people that, say, home computers, airplanes, the Beatles, etc. will be big in the future and see how they react.

This troper was in a Current Issues class in 2005 or 2006. One week, he missed a question about his Senator. Not being particularly interested in Illinois politicians at the time, he shrugged it off and figured "Oh well, I probably won't have to remember that name again." Barack Obama turned out to be kind of a big deal.

This troper remembers she and her friends discussing how "some upcoming basketball musical" would be the dumbest thing ever back in junior high.

In all fairness, it was.

This troper's Dad says that he wishes he could tell (and show) his 20-year-old self (he's almost 52 as of this writing) that NASCAR would one day be the most popular sport in the US just to see the reaction he'd get. Then there was my maternal grandfather turning down a position on the board of directors of a little fast food chain named Wendy's, my Dad's paternal uncle turning down the founder of Polaroid, and my Dad turning down 10,000 shares of Netflix stock. HumanTorch2

After reading a review about a Broadway musical starring the Wicked Witch of the West in ''Time'' magazine, this troper thought, "Well, it might be interesting to revisit a classic story from the villain's perspective, but I don't think I'll ever hear about this show again. I can't remember the last time a Broadway musical held the interest of a wide portion of the general public."

An online friend of this troper went to Catholic school in the 1950s. One time, at lunch, he was talking with his friend, who declared "You know what? I think that the first man to walk on the moon has already been born!" The nun who overheard this wrote home to both of their parents telling them not to let their kids read so many dumb sci-fi comics...

In a very extreme version this troper's grandmother told me that when she first heard about plastic, she said, "Plastic??? That'll never last."

Same person adding, considering the time period, it was invented before then, but it might have just started to become well-known. Maybe. *shrug*

Back when the pilot episode of {{Glee}} aired, I watched it and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I thought because it was on Fox and my perceived niche-ness of the show it would be canceled by the end of the year. Thank God I was wrong.

This Troper has the terrible habit of assuming new movies won't be very good. Tangled? Megamind? Meh, cliche and trite. Now, Battle for Terra, Delgo, those look like good movies! *facepalm*

This troper (during a discussion about race relations in America) once said "a black president? In our lifetime? You're nuts!" Obama}} Six years later...

Even though this Tropette had a crush on the actor playing Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, she assumed that that role will be his last. Imagine her surprise a few years later when she found out he was going to be playing the lead in a certain movie called "Twilight".

This Troper remembers back around 2000 when he heard of a game called YuGiOh that was going to be the new Pokemon. To be fair, I was half right. It didn't unseat the champ, but it still got quite a following.

The TCG actually is outselling Pokemon's TCG, to be fair--it's second only to MagicTheGathering in terms of sales, last I heard. It's just everything else...

At the library, I borrowed this book about comics. It was from the Eighties, and about comics from different countries - one of them being Japan. At the last page of the Japan chapter, the author mentioned that "these comics will likely never be popular in the West..." which, as we all know, is just HilariousInHindsight today.

I didn't think any of the shows on HasbrosTheHub would prove successful, since they sounded too commercialized for their own good. Now, I can't escape ''MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fans unless I stop using the Internet.doesn't help that [[OneOfUs I myself like ''Friendship Is Magic'', albeit not as strongly as ''AvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' or ''RegularShow'']]

Back in 2010: what's this ScottPilgrim thing? Eh, just a weird badly-drawn comic. Never gonna find more than a niche following, that's for sure.

A few years ago, I started watching this show on the Syfy Channel. I begin to like it, and as I watch the final episode, I see that they've created this whole scene where one of the actors is being replaced. I get worried, thinking to myself, "Damn it, replacing actors never works. I just got into this show and it's already in trouble." The Show? ''Series/DoctorWho.'' The Scene? Christopher Eccleston's regeneration into DavidTennant. I don't think I ever felt so foolish.