this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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I got married in the aughts, just a few years after Outkast came out with the song Hey Ya, which was a super popular song. Anyway, my wife and I had a Polaroid camera and thought it would be fun to leave it out with a bunch of film so our wedding guests could take pictures of the night for us.
So we went to Target to buy film and ask a teenager working there if they sold Polaroid film. They had no idea what we were talking about. I said remember asking my wife, "So what do you suppose they think that line 'shake it like a Polaroid picture' means?"
That teenager would be in their mid-30s by now...
The aughts?? Surely that must have been a particularly ignorant teen, or they were messing with you. High quality phone cameras were far from ubiquitous then. My phone had a camera but I was still buying disposable ones at CVS before going on trips so I could get high quality photos all the way through the aughts. And if that teen is in their mid 30s now, I'm still younger than them...
I'm 29 and we had a Polaroid at our wedding three years ago. That teenager must've been living under a rock.
In the time period they were referencing Polaroids were at risk of extinction because only one company was making the film at one plant and only through the complaining of hipsters were you able to have Polaroids at your wedding.
2001 Polaroid went bankrupt. 07-08 cameras and film stopped production.
2010 a hipster group restarted production.
2020 new Polaroid cameras are introduced.
Many younger people only know Polaroids as an icon in a video game or a prop from a music video; they don't know what they are called.
You're kind of forgetting about digital cameras. Looking back, I was on my 3rd or 4th digital camera at the time - and Polaroid had been bankrupt for years.
I didn't mean good digitals didn't exist, but that analog camaras were still very common. And they were. The overwhelming majority of teens in the aughts would know very well what polaroid was
Maybe it was the Polaroid part they didn't understand? Probably used to disposables.
Probably that. Im mid 30s, UK, and have never seen a Polaroid in my life. Ive seen 2 people with polaroids on their bedroom walls, but never seen a camera except on TV.
To my mind they're only used to show "look, its the 80s! Its a scene set in the past!" Or "look how quirky the indie hipster kid in this scene is!"
Polaroid is actually a genericization for instant print camera film though o doubt he would have known it by the proper term either.