Life before the Internet

This is for young people who weren't around when there was no such thing as online anything. The personal computer wasn't even invented yet. Oh, there were computers, but you needed a forklift to move them and a college degree to be allowed near one. There was no Google or any other search engine. If you needed to research anything you looked it up in an encyclopedia, or went to the library for a book on the subject. libraries were very popular, everybody had a library card.

If you wanted to buy something from a distant company, you called them on the phone at a number you got from an ad in a magazine or newspaper or on TV. Maybe they would send the item COD or you had to mail them a check before they shipped the item.
There were no dating sites. If you wanted to meet somebody, you either went to a bar, cruised around looking for someone waiting for a bus and offering a ride or a friend introduced you to a sibling or a friend. There were also "Lonely Hearts clubs" you could join. It was a painstaking process but at least you weren't spinning your wheels on someone from a different hemisphere or getting fleeced by scammers from Nigeria or Ghana.
There was no email. If you wanted to write to someone, you either wrote or typed a letter, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and brought it to the post office to mail it. If it was going very far away you could send it Airmail for extra postage or it would be transported by train or steamship if it was going across the ocean. It could take a week or longer for a letter to go cross country by regular mail.

There were no online games. If you felt like playing a card game you got out the deck of cards and played with another person(s) or played solitaire. Same with any other kind of game. Or you could go to a bar where they may have had a console with a game called PONG which was just bouncing a ball back & forth on a TV screen with a paddle you controlled with a knob.