THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Last Year Before Everything Changed

Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift · Apr 17, 2026 · 8m

1998 throwback Thursday lands on a year that felt safe and new at the exact same time. The Discman was still in your bag. Blockbuster still had a line on Friday night. Gas was 50 cents a litre. And Google went from being called BackRub to Google and quietly started changing everything before anyone noticed.

What does it feel like to look back at a year where you were living in one world and the next one was already being built behind you? The Truman Show came out that year and people laughed at the idea that someone might be living in a constructed simulation without knowing it. That joke has…