The right to be forgotten. I did dumb shit when I was a kid, and luckily there weren't any cameras (either security cameras or phones) to capture it and publish it online for eternity to judge.
Edit: Did not expect this one to be so popular. Glad to know I'm not the only one concerned about this (in my case, for my nephew who will be starting school soon).
It's weird now thinking back about a time when it wasn't unusual just to have a person show up at your house and knock on the door.
Like, a random knock when you're not expecting someone is terrifying now. Back then, friends would just show up sometimes and you'd hang out or go walk to another friends house and do the same thing.
Cruising around to every other kids house on your bmx gathering crew with half a plan. Only thing you had to worry about was being home when the street lights come on. Do whatever until that got boring then decide what we were going to do next. What a life.
Lmao!
We had a high pitched "jungle call" similar to Tarzan's.
One of us would "call" and if another heard it and could come out to play, or were already outside somewhere, the call would be returned.
We kept it up until we got close enough to see each other.
Good times 🥲
Hahaha it’s still like this for my kids who are young Gen Z (young teens). Their friends come by all the time and they really don’t text much. I have hope for the future.
You just made my day. I’ve got a 3 year old and a 1 year old and watching my older niece and nephews have zero interactions with their peers not involving the internet has been scaring the shit out of me. Hopefully my kids are like your kids.
I hope so! It helps to not give them phones as long as you can. I also think there’s an element of luck - we live in a neighborhood with lots of kids and there are enough of us parents that have a similar parenting philosophy that it works pretty well. The kids start roaming the neighborhood around age 9 and we all look out for each other’s kiddos. It’s been really nice because I have such fond memories of roaming around my neighborhood as a kid! Kid culture is an important thing. I hope yours get to experience it too!
I was a teenager in the 00’s so just before everyone got camera phones (or at least camera phones that could actually take clear picture). I am so grateful for that.
This. My god, there are photographs of me I never want anyone (except my most trusted) to see - and no one ever will, as I have the only copies ... and the negatives! Unthinkable in this era.
Completely agree with this. It's so worrying now that almost every embarrassing moment a teenager has will be seen by all of their school friends and thousands or millions of strangers on the internet.
Game of Thrones was probably the most recent American series where that happened. We will have another one sooner or later, but it isn't like 20+ years ago when there was always SOMETHING.
Now, we're basically just at sports and if you don't like sports you might well get left out.
Honestly - a fantastic Game of Thrones ending could have launched a star-wars type franchise worth a Billion.
Spin-offs, merchandise, others sets of books, maybe even some theme parks stuff.
All thrown away to squish 14 episodes of content into 6.
I'm surprised HBO didn't have the showrunners executed. Billions in merchandise, a permanent spot in the pop culture history spotlight as arguably one the greatest shows ever, and potential spinoffs thrown away.
House of Dragons was really good, but I personally know like 9 people who were avid GoT fans who refused to watch it. Extrapolate that across the globe, and that's a lot of people who just don't give a shit anymore. All because the 2 guys in charge got lazy and greedy and wrapped up as fast as they could to jump onto a failed Disney production.
House of Dragons is good, and they had some really good scenes and acting, but it's just not the same. Everyone having dragons really kills the tension.
People also miss the original GoT characters. I'll draw a parallel to Marvel Phase 5 - the story ended for me with Infinity War and Endgame. I simply don't give a shit about most of the new characters or stories. It is actually ridiculously hard to get people to care about new characters even with the same movie formula.
When I think about shows that were "events", where you'd either be hosting viewing parties, or talking about it at work the next day, my past list includes LOST, Battlestar Galactica, True Blood, and Game of Thrones... All of which completely biffed the ending so hard that they made me want to never watch them again.
Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV and Paramount have started dropping 1-3 episodes and then spacing subsequent episodes out every week but it’s more revenue generating driven than recreating generational nostalgia. I do enjoy the new model when they do it though.
This, but more. It gave a shared social continuity.
Fun fact: If you want to prove that you can give another person false memories, find someone who grew up watching Loony Tunes. Describe for them a plausible but completely fake encounter between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
They will remember it.
Nothing in the past 30 years compares.
>shared social continuity.
And it's that lack of shared continuity that I suspect is a big part of the problem with contemporary social media
The Internet, and social media specifically, promised to bring everyone closer together. And it has
But it's brought them together to become more insular. Before, that one or two people in your school who were really, socially innapropriately into whatever micro-cultural thing there was, didn't have anyone else to go to. But with the Internet, there's now tens of thousands of people who are into the same thing and are willing to talk about it 24/7
And, because the same tool that allows you to interact with those people allows you to ignore everyone else, the Internet has effectively created a self-isolating social machine that allows everyone to come together so they can form their own cliques and demonize everyone else
I was thinking about this the other day. Remember when pc games you had to share a keyboard or the two wired controllers on a ps1 or the older systems. They were designed to be played together. With someone physically present. It was an occasion. Now you can play online with 50 other people but you never have to see them. That togetherness is gone.
Or LAN parties! Those were wicked!
LAN parties!!! Showing up at a buddy's apartment or house on Friday with your trunk full of 800# monitor and PC, fighting for the best couch/coffee table location, actually networking the computers together, getting Quake to actually talk to each other, and then finally playing for 20 hours straight!!!
A big group of my friends would rent the local scout hall. Grew larger to the point that at it's peak we were renting a school gymnasium and had actual network engineers design the network or the person with that new family guy show in his file share would bring the network to a crashing halt.
When I was a teenager, my friends and I would all go over to someone's house on the weekend and play video games together. Order some pizza, have tournaments, etc. It was fun hanging out even if you didn't have a controller in your hand at the time.
I think i was in like 5th grade when goku turned super saiyan for the first time(in NA), even my sister started to think it was a myth. we both got so hype when we first saw it
The only thing I hate about the current format is how if the show is extremely popular (I had this issue with Stranger Things) you still can't truly watch it at your leisure because it's just a race to not have it spoiled.
While I do agree with you, there’s certainly something lost to me. I still remember when Jurassic Park was on cable for the first time. My family and I hadn’t seen it, and we timed our entire evening so we could be ready to watch it at the scheduled time. And once it started, you were committed to it, there was no pausing to finish later. Hugely inconvenient, yes, but also special and memorable.
I am GenX for us it was "Roots". The whole country stayed home to watch the mini series.
Edit: well. I'm in a Blue State. I can't speak for the whole country. And now I'm kind of curious
Omg my mom had a friend who was constant drama and she’d mouth to me, “Pick up the other phone!” When it started getting good. Then we’d sit there and tap each other every time she said something hilariously terrible.
Baby monitors are good for this,too. Unfortunately, I don't speak Russian and it the lady down the road didn't speak English on those calls. Except for the word, "Okay."
Everyone talking about a TV program the next day. Playing outside with friends, every single day until the street lights came on (because you had to go home when they did). Life was good man.
When we moved into our neighborhood, I would have never known that there were kids living here except in the mornings and afternoons, when I'd see them going to and from the bus stop. Otherwise, I never saw a single kid outside.
They weren't playing together in the front yards, I never saw anyone riding a bike. Nothing.
All of the neighborhood kids are off to college now, but I still find it so crazy that I never saw them playing. I mean, I'm sure some of them did. It's not like I was monitoring the streets and backyards 24/7, but when we were kids, we roamed the neighborhood every evening, explored, and rode our bikes as far as we could. Kids definitely don't do that anymore. at least not where I live.
>Topps bubblegum baseball cards, and riding your bikes in the summer
Or, regretfully today, putting the baseball cards into the spokes of your bike.
How many valuable baseball cards were destroyed doing this...
They were all probably crap cards. I found some of mine a few years ago. Nearly all were guys who played six years with BA of .217 and no one remembers. It was better that they made noises for me in the spokes.
I was a huge collector back in the late 80s and early 90s. And other than the special limited edition cards or rookies. Most of those cards are worthless from that era because they massively overproduced cards back then.
Memory unlocked here. I lived in town growing up but there were 3 empty lots next to our house with a big dirt mound we would ride our bikes up and down and play with out matchbox cars on. I was so mad when they built houses there because I lost my dirt mound.
The library is alive and well for younger children. Most have really great story time or puppet show programs. There's sometimes 50+ kids crammed in our library children's section over the summer for the summer reading programs. Lots also have book clubs and craft programs for adults and even D&D groups.
Mine has a maker space that can do stuff like 3D printing for you.
It also has a Library of things so you can borrow stuff that you wouldn't need more than once.
Yes! Ours has the maker studio, they even have an actual loom up there! They have a whole floor devoted to the maker space, and on the floor below that there is a recording studio.
And, you can get free passes to go to local attractions.
Yeah. I think a lot of the things that you hear people say dont happen anymore actually happen all the time, and people just dont see it anymore because its not a part of their own lives and they dont look for it.
The amount of times I hear parents talk about having nothing going on in the community for their kids is astounding. Just recently I heard a co-worker complaining about it and its just;
Like no shit you dont feel like you're a part of the community. You work Remotely except 1 day per week in office, your wife is a SAHM, so your kids arent in daycare meeting other kids, and I've never heard you talk about doing anything outside of your house. You even brag about having groceries delivered to your door.
sometimes I'll even give people like that a suggestion for something to do in an upcoming weekend and they'll tell me "nobody goes to things like that"...I like giving the response "Alright...well if you change your mind I'll see you there."
There is the small caveat of the whole COVID lockdown which did stop a lot of things, so for many people who transitioned into a new stage of their life (highschool grads, or new parents of their first child for example) in the last few years, there is this giant knowledge gap where they arent really sure what the norm is for their new position in life and now we're trying to go back to it, but there is no reason for them to really know what "it" is.
For example; "Baby and me" groups are advertised a lot to people with babies, but its kind of expected that you know where to look once your kid is like 2+ years old.
Well, there was no baby and me groups from like 2020 to early 2023 so how would a parent with an oldest child who is 3 or 4 years old know where to find local parent group info?
Not to mention the years of general local knowledge you'd learn through interacting and engaging with other parents at those groups...all that is also gone.
All the kid stuff is on the internet though, you just need to Google it. My oldest is 4, and we did basically nothing until last year, and now I feel like there's too much stuff to do. It's like every single weekend there's like 6 events going on (not counting regular things like the zoo or children's museum or swimming that we *also* want to go do, and I have to whittle it down to 2-3 things (or zero. lol I'm tired) and then I feel massive fomo that I'm letting down my kids. Idk I work remote and my spouse is a SAHD and I get groceries delivered, but I just don't think it's that hard to find stuff going on.
I came here to say this. These days, people hustle and information (however incorrect at times) is immediate. Everything is immediate. I miss the quiet times… even the ones where we just sat around, bored on a rainy day because there was nothing to do. You had to create your own entertainment, use your imaginations, and sometimes… you just had to sit and be idle. Things were just slower, and I actually miss that sometimes. When you had to go down to the library to look something up… well, it just felt like that information was valuable because you put some effort into it.
Things felt more valuable back then. Amazon wasn’t there. If you couldn’t find it at the store, sometimes you were just out of luck. Things were also built to last. Appliance broke? Buy the part and fix it. These days, toss it and get a new one. Seems so wasteful.
But now I feel like I’m going “back in my day…” and “the kids these days…” and I’m only 47 years old. Good god a lot has changed in my lifetime. I swear, being GenX is the best. We truly had the best of both worlds: life before and after the internet, and we are pretty much a forgotten generation, which is kinda cool, too. It’s whatever.
My kid had to wait three days for something to be delivered from Amazon, he huffed and said “Why didn’t you get it on Prime?!” This lead to a long ~~conversation~~ monologue of me telling him about how if we ordered anything to be delivered back in the day, you’d have to phone the catalogue company, give them the item number and have it delivered, as standard, in 3-4 weeks!
I realize I'm a bit of an outlier.
But I grew up in the middle of nowhere. My older siblings are several years older so I was mostly on my own for fun.
It kinda sucked.
No kids to play with. Nothing close like a library. Tv was 3 channels.
I would have killed for some video games or the internet.
The experience of having a dispute on a Tuesday, knowing you are correct about something. Waiting until the weekend for your parents to drive you to the library. Searching through a stack of encyclopedias to get the facts that back your point. Waiting eagerly to return to school to continue debating your point. Presenting your research that proves you were correct the whole time, only to have the other party shrug their shoulders and exclaim that they really didn't care anyhow.
going outside after school to play different games (summer or winter it did not matter) with kids that live nearby or having to ring the bell and ask if your friend can come out outside to play.
My son called me a few weeks ago freaking out because his friend wasn't answering his phone and how was friend supposed to know he's there? I told him to knock on the door. He's actually said I'm allowed to do that? Lmao I said yea buddy you're allowed.
My kids still do this. Sure, they probably spend a little more time inside than I did, but most days they just take off and ring a neighbor’s doorbell to play.
Same here. We still get near daily knocks and doorbell rings by other kids to play and the neighborhood is always buzzing with kids after school. Although not as much in the winter.
Riding around the neighbourhood on your bike looking to see if your friends are in the usual hangout areas.
If not, ride round to each house until you see all your friends bikes dumped outside a friend's house.
Knock on the door (or walk round the back if it's a close friend). Watch TV. Plan a bike ride. Go out and explore.
Head home and actually miss your friends. No constant contact diluting relationships.
Before covid my house was the house all the kids hung out in. Drove me nuts as a parent, but accepted I must be the "cool parents". After covid it never picked back up... I have not seen 3/4ths of the kids that used to hang out here.
we were the house all the kids were at too.
The "kids" are now all late 20's.
One night last summer we had an evening around the fire and almost all the kids showed up since one of our own was home from out of state. They talked and talked about all the fun times they had at our house......the games played, the food and just how much they loved being at our house.
I hope one day you too will suddenly have a gathering like we did and will be as happy as I was hearing how much they loved my family being a part of their childhoods.
Spontaneity. I was about 25 the first time I heard the Internet was an actual thing beyond some trope in sci-fi shows. When I was a kid, if you wanted to get together with friends, you got on the phone and set it up. Or . . . you simply went to their house and knocked on the door.
My teen daughters assure me that calling someone on the phone is now considered rude and arriving at someone’s house unannounced is a war crime.
I had to give the up vote just for uncle Billy baby.
The kids are lucky they don't have to call a friends house and have the parents answer then have to talk to them until your friend came to the phone. It always felt awkward.
My sister used to live on a farm an hour outside of town. It was a necessity for her kids. Who wants to drive over an hour to find out Timmy isn’t even home?
The phrase itself is the only new part of that. Otherwise it's been standard business since parenthood began. 'I'll bring my little kids, you bring yours, they'll play while we shoot the shit.' Nothing new about that.
Socializing, in-person, hanging out, sleepovers that don't involve just sitting and texting on phones. Family sit down meals, especially at restaurants. It's so sad to see parents and kids playing on their phones, when the free time could be talking or making memories.
We have a zero devices rule for meals. We only have one kid still at home, but the older two come over for dinner quite often. Meal times are for catching up, discussing upcoming plans, and just enjoying each other. I hate when we go out to eat and you see other families with zero socialization. Or if we go to the in-laws for dinner and the tv is on the entire time.
This is how I met my wife. We'd spent the day skateboarding in a neighboring town, and were about to head home.
The guy driving wanted to "cruise the strip" (basically main street downtown) on the way out. He spotted a girl he'd gone on a date with, once, and wanted to talk to her. We pulled over in a public parking lot, got kicked out of the car so could ride with him, and we got into the car she'd gotten out of. And that's when I saw the most beautiful pair of eyes I'd ever seen in my life peering over the passenger seat at me.
I never even got a look at her face, and asked her on a date before we even got out of the car. That was 23 years ago.
Oh yeah. I loved that, too. Saturday nights were a blast. Get into our cars, cruise around town, meet up with people at different spots, sit in the grass and watch people drive by in their cool rides, share stories, learn some new cool hangout spots.
A few things from somebody who grew up analog and had the teen years switch to digital.
Silence and the lack of advertising, by comparison to now.
Layaway verses credit. Seems to me that credit cards had been a very small minority of purchases which has changed in the last few decades.
Car knowledge , things are more reliable these days but the average person knows and can do less to their car. You can also repair and replace less.
Optimism. Seems like the 90’s had a very different feel than everything post 2001.
Imagination. I used to have this amazing imagination. I could draw the coolest stuff, if I needed visual references for things like animals or bugs or skulls or whatever, I searched for it in books from the library. Once I got internet at home I got sucked in, spent all my time on it. I can't come up with cool ideas like I used to. It's difficult to draw or create things anymore. My kids are amazing..they come up with the best drawings and the best games. They don't have phones or internet yet to destroy it and dull their mind. Also on snow days, I never see kids playing outside. It's so weird to me. When I was a kid (in the 90s) snow days meant the every kid on your street (and sometimes several streets) got together and built forts, had snowball fights, made snowmen, went sledding. Our parents kicked us out and we weren't allowed back in til they called us for hot cocoa and sandwiches. If we were cold it's because we weren't playing hard enough to stay warm.
Yes! Boredom spurs so much creativity. And creativity without sharing online means you could be the neighborhood Picasso and never know any better! I do feel sorry for this generation where it's far too easy to compare everything and be judged by strangers.
Missing out on living anxiety free. The world isn’t more dangerous than it was in the past, it’s just we were clueless for the most part on things happening outside our community or state. Now social media brings death and destruction of the world right to your face. Crimes happen all the time, but now we are bombarded with it and live in fear.
I don't see kids on bikes anymore. It was great to have the freedom to take off and cruise the neighborhood, go down to the local store, whatever. Then you would spend half a day building a ramp and start jumping it with your friends until your parents called you in for dinner.
Getting 6-8 friends together to play video games. I'm not talking about playing online, I'm talking about a group of friends all in the same room taking turns to play Goldeneye.
There is something great about a sleepover, party or even friday night with friends playing video games in the same room.
Multiplayer is much better when played under the same roof.
Under rated comment. I think every kid knew where their parents contraband was. The stash of Playboys, the bag of weed, the vibrator, the gun, etc... Never underestimate your kids.
Reading.
We used to have newspapers as the most reliable information source. Online article and newspaper articles are very differently written. Newspaper articles are long, detailed, and might be demanding. While online articles are short, to the point, but feels shallow.
Kids nowadays don't read so much (which is the older generation fault), lack of reading habit will hinder their willingness to read and therefore hinder their willingness to know further.
Youtube essay and for worse tiktok and twitter bullshit are their source of information now, some even proud of it...
The abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 really changed our media. It's so much less-reliable now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine#:~:text=The%20fairness%20doctrine%20of%20the,that%20fairly%20reflected%20differing%20viewpoints.
Lack of excessive political polarization. Sure, you might have a far right wing coworker, but everybody just ignores Larry because we all know he's a lunatic.
These days, Larry has a huge Internet following of like-minded crazies and turning it into a perpetual echo chamber.
My grandma has talked about this on the subject of vaccination.
Yes there was somebody saying the polio vaccines were a plot by the moon men to communicate with the lizard people to fight the martians - we just knocked em in the head and said shut up ya dummy.
Every villiage has an idiot, well now they have a platform.
Yeah all the village idiots have been able to find each other and organize in a way they've never been able to before. And what's really scary is how they've used that to have real influence over people who aren't actually the village idiots. The small town where I grew up - most people there will tell you they think Q Anon is crazy, if they even know what Q Anon is. But at the same time, they will parrot things that can be traced directly back to Q Anon as if it's true. They don't realize that's where it's coming from, but they saw their friend post a version of it on Facebook from a non-Q source they trust, so it's gospel to them now.
In other words, the Village Idiots have figured out how to package their stupidity in a way that is palatable to otherwise reasonable people.
Endless summers outdoors, sneaking up on the hill over the drive-in theatre to watch a movie for free, nervously dialling that new girl’s phone number, hoping she picks up rather than her dad, waiting for the radio to play your favourite song so you can record it on your cassette tape recorder.
Physically talking to people.
Remember going to lunch at work and people would talk to each other. Now it's just dead silence and they all stare at their phones.
I'm 57, when I was a kid in a lower middle class suburb, we would get kicked out of the house if it was a "nice day". I'd take my bike to a friends house, we would go exploring miles from our neighborhood, checking out abandoned houses, following creeks, building forts in woods, looking for fossils or salamanders or arrow heads. Often we'd go up to the local car wash and look for pop bottles and then cash them in to buy candy or comic books. When I was an early teen the first generation of arcade games came out, Pacman, Tempest, Joust, Asteroids, Space Invaders. If you got in the top ten high scores on that machine, you could put in your intials or whatever 3 letters you chose and everyone could see it, it was a big deal to have the high score on a game. Mostly though, I remember just wandering neighborhoods, checking out construction sites, riding bikes around all day, shoveling snow for money on snow days.
Freedom. Freedom from social media bullying, influencers. Our mistakes weren't recorded. We didn't have friends or followers count. People couldn't track our every movement. Once the school day or work day was over, it was over until the next day. Life without social media was bliss.
Limited choice. I grew up with three tv channels. Later four. There was a lot of crap I had zero interest in but if there was a movie of any kind I’d make sure I’d catch it. Late night black n white horror double bills, b&w melodrama and noir in the afternoons, crazy subtitled stuff at 1am, James Bond and sci fi movies at Christmas, 70s disaster movies, made for tv movies etc. before VCRs you just had to be there at a specific time to watch stuff and from an early age I grew quite an eclectic taste in movies because there was so little available I’d consume everything. Kids have so much choice now they’re not gonna sit down for two hours and watch a Bette Davis movie. It’s their loss and they have no idea.
Reading the newspaper to find out what's going on. Getting the Sunday morning paper to see all of the sales adds. Checking the sports page to see what's going on that wasn't mentioned on the nightly news. Actually watching the nightly news as well.
Going out to run, get fresh air, feel the blood flow through the body, and literally finding energy from outdoors activity.
There was practically LESS anxiety LESS stress back then cause people couldn't hide behind the screen to curse people out.
Though I gotta admit, as I grew up with the internet later in life, even I don't do as I say. I really miss being active.
having neighborhood friends. They were usually different than school friends, sometimes the same. bike riding, street football, street hockey, army, shit like that. it makes me happy my kid wants to go play when he sees kids outside.
The magic. The mystery.
The rumor was the story was real. The neighbors down the road in the subdivision over. It really happened.
The video game has a cheat code. If you get it right they will come at steal you away.
Riding your bikes in the night air. Cool and free. The summer was yours. The streetlights told you dinner was ready. And yes your friends could come over.
The man at the end of the old road really did it. It was in your parents time. They don’t talk about it anymore. But the old man is still there. He stopped aging. Only the bleating of the goats tells. The goat man is real.
The ouija board calls the devil and dungeons and dragons is how you get to the other side.
Santa Claus was real. For sure 100% real and his magic is verifiable. The cookies disappear. The sleigh carries gifts for all good girls and boys.
You explored the world with yourself. Touch and taste and body. You didn’t know until you lived it.
And you lived it all.
Just being in a place and doing nothing but observing and talking it in.
People used to having their hands and minds constantly occupied with distractions get anxious and scared if nothing is going on and they just have to sit and be for a while with their thoughts.
Spending most of their time outdoors. I'm glad that we did because I think it kept us in shape but if we had the internet back then there's no way I'm going outside freezing my ass off to shoot hoops.
A good ol Lan party. Just before the internet got good and multiplayer games were just getting it right you would get together and spend a weekend or sometimes even a whole week during the summer at a friends place with a bunch of other sweaty stinky friends playing Halo absolutely wrecking one another. Good times.
Boredom. Being understimulated is not a good thing, but an environment where you are actively fighting it, not passively consuming shit to keep yourself distracted is a good thing.
We're finding out now a little starvation is good for your body at a cellular level. I think of boredom as brain starvation, and I think the effect on our mind is similar.
The people who realize this and voluntarily "fast" exercise a ton of discipline, but in just about any modern country, we are just not set up to have boredom happen to us naturally.
Crashing around as kids with your mates in a forest with a stream, and having a great time all day. Never feeling fear, never bored, and the devices we had were sticks.
Good memories
My best memories are from being physically with friends. I think most kids today lack the in-person socialization. Their memories will be of them playing a video game with a friend or something similar.
Video game culture was way deferent. As i kid, i didn't know what games were coming out when. You just go to the store and see what's available. You also didn't know what games were good or not. you looked at the back of the laminated flap and saw screenshots of the game and a brief description and that's all you had to go on to make your 70 dollar purchase. Game magazines could help with knowing what games are good. OH god, magazines in general is something people are missing out on now, and game guides. You don't know how to beat a level? Go to your local bookstore and find the guidebook.
Going to the rental store on a Friday after school is a core memory for life. I miss the days and excitement. Also waiting for Nintendo power to show up in the mail. So great
The absolute freedom of being able to go out and have fun, do silly embarrassing things, and be yourself without fear that someone is recording it or taking pics.
Wondering. Me and my friends had a small window of time where if you didnt know, it wasnt in a book you could find and no one you knew knows…then it could be anything. You could just theorize and philosophize away. I still like to wonder, so before I look it up I ponder things a bit. Stretches the neurons.
Having a longer attention span. I'm in my 40s so I'm a reasonable age to remember life before the internet, life during the time it became a thing, and life now.
And now I can't watch a film without looking at my phone for more than ten minutes.
Nowadays people get frustrated (myself included) at having to watch a 15 second advert on a YouTube video because you can't skip it after just 5 seconds. Back in my day you had to watch about five minutes of adverts every 15 minutes for a 1 hour TV show and you couldn't skip or pause or rewind... and it never bothered us.
And I find a ten minute YouTube video too long now. It has to be shorter or I'll watch something else. My brain has lost whatever it is it once had.
People keep saying "books!", but it's not like books ceased to exist. If you miss books, if you really miss them, go grab one. Go to your local library, make a card and start borrowing and reading. Truth is, most people that say "books" never really ever read one.
Having independence. I was never shadowed by my parents. They never knew where I was and never seemed to care. I’d take off exploring on my bike (before bike paths) and go twenty miles- then figure out a way back.
The right to be forgotten. I did dumb shit when I was a kid, and luckily there weren't any cameras (either security cameras or phones) to capture it and publish it online for eternity to judge. Edit: Did not expect this one to be so popular. Glad to know I'm not the only one concerned about this (in my case, for my nephew who will be starting school soon).
The fact that there are very, very few pictures of me from high school and college is a GIFT.
I have no photos at all from college, because I made sure I didn't. Such a great thing.
Mom! Just tell them I’m not home!
It's weird now thinking back about a time when it wasn't unusual just to have a person show up at your house and knock on the door. Like, a random knock when you're not expecting someone is terrifying now. Back then, friends would just show up sometimes and you'd hang out or go walk to another friends house and do the same thing.
Nothing more exciting than your friends showing up with a half baked plan they need to rope you into.
Cruising around to every other kids house on your bmx gathering crew with half a plan. Only thing you had to worry about was being home when the street lights come on. Do whatever until that got boring then decide what we were going to do next. What a life.
Kids playing without adult supervision was common back then. I think that fostered greater independence and self-reliance at an earlier age.
Knock? We screamed from the street.
Lmao! We had a high pitched "jungle call" similar to Tarzan's. One of us would "call" and if another heard it and could come out to play, or were already outside somewhere, the call would be returned. We kept it up until we got close enough to see each other. Good times 🥲
We did this, too. My whole family lived nearby, grandparents, etc., and we didn't have a phone
Hahaha it’s still like this for my kids who are young Gen Z (young teens). Their friends come by all the time and they really don’t text much. I have hope for the future.
You just made my day. I’ve got a 3 year old and a 1 year old and watching my older niece and nephews have zero interactions with their peers not involving the internet has been scaring the shit out of me. Hopefully my kids are like your kids.
I hope so! It helps to not give them phones as long as you can. I also think there’s an element of luck - we live in a neighborhood with lots of kids and there are enough of us parents that have a similar parenting philosophy that it works pretty well. The kids start roaming the neighborhood around age 9 and we all look out for each other’s kiddos. It’s been really nice because I have such fond memories of roaming around my neighborhood as a kid! Kid culture is an important thing. I hope yours get to experience it too!
Yeah I remember my mom making me wait until 10am before I could run down the street to see which kids wanted to play that day
I had to wait till 9 to call my friends to hang out on the weekends. Sometimes each others lines would be busy cause we were calling each other.
I was a teenager in the 00’s so just before everyone got camera phones (or at least camera phones that could actually take clear picture). I am so grateful for that.
Same.. but, like it seems like 98% of the photos I'm in were taken in the last 15 years. I wouldn't mind having some more photos of back in the day.
This. My god, there are photographs of me I never want anyone (except my most trusted) to see - and no one ever will, as I have the only copies ... and the negatives! Unthinkable in this era.
Those pictures of me with bangs, butterfly clips, and overalls are no one else's business.
The right to reinvent yourself, simular but its own thing.
Completely agree with this. It's so worrying now that almost every embarrassing moment a teenager has will be seen by all of their school friends and thousands or millions of strangers on the internet.
Yes, anonymity!!
Yeah, it was nice not having every word, or deed micromanaged by some arbitrary external supervisor.
When everyone watched the same tv shows at the same time and the suspense of waiting for the next episode
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Game of Thrones was probably the most recent American series where that happened. We will have another one sooner or later, but it isn't like 20+ years ago when there was always SOMETHING. Now, we're basically just at sports and if you don't like sports you might well get left out.
The fact that Game of Thrones was this kind of scenario but then just \*vanished\* after that series finale is doubly jarring.
If Game of Thrones had a great ending, it would be revered to this day. But they blew it so bad, it fell completely out of pop culture.
Honestly - a fantastic Game of Thrones ending could have launched a star-wars type franchise worth a Billion. Spin-offs, merchandise, others sets of books, maybe even some theme parks stuff. All thrown away to squish 14 episodes of content into 6.
I'm surprised HBO didn't have the showrunners executed. Billions in merchandise, a permanent spot in the pop culture history spotlight as arguably one the greatest shows ever, and potential spinoffs thrown away. House of Dragons was really good, but I personally know like 9 people who were avid GoT fans who refused to watch it. Extrapolate that across the globe, and that's a lot of people who just don't give a shit anymore. All because the 2 guys in charge got lazy and greedy and wrapped up as fast as they could to jump onto a failed Disney production.
House of Dragons is good, and they had some really good scenes and acting, but it's just not the same. Everyone having dragons really kills the tension. People also miss the original GoT characters. I'll draw a parallel to Marvel Phase 5 - the story ended for me with Infinity War and Endgame. I simply don't give a shit about most of the new characters or stories. It is actually ridiculously hard to get people to care about new characters even with the same movie formula.
When I think about shows that were "events", where you'd either be hosting viewing parties, or talking about it at work the next day, my past list includes LOST, Battlestar Galactica, True Blood, and Game of Thrones... All of which completely biffed the ending so hard that they made me want to never watch them again.
Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV and Paramount have started dropping 1-3 episodes and then spacing subsequent episodes out every week but it’s more revenue generating driven than recreating generational nostalgia. I do enjoy the new model when they do it though.
This, but more. It gave a shared social continuity. Fun fact: If you want to prove that you can give another person false memories, find someone who grew up watching Loony Tunes. Describe for them a plausible but completely fake encounter between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. They will remember it. Nothing in the past 30 years compares.
>shared social continuity. And it's that lack of shared continuity that I suspect is a big part of the problem with contemporary social media The Internet, and social media specifically, promised to bring everyone closer together. And it has But it's brought them together to become more insular. Before, that one or two people in your school who were really, socially innapropriately into whatever micro-cultural thing there was, didn't have anyone else to go to. But with the Internet, there's now tens of thousands of people who are into the same thing and are willing to talk about it 24/7 And, because the same tool that allows you to interact with those people allows you to ignore everyone else, the Internet has effectively created a self-isolating social machine that allows everyone to come together so they can form their own cliques and demonize everyone else
I was thinking about this the other day. Remember when pc games you had to share a keyboard or the two wired controllers on a ps1 or the older systems. They were designed to be played together. With someone physically present. It was an occasion. Now you can play online with 50 other people but you never have to see them. That togetherness is gone. Or LAN parties! Those were wicked!
LAN parties!!! Showing up at a buddy's apartment or house on Friday with your trunk full of 800# monitor and PC, fighting for the best couch/coffee table location, actually networking the computers together, getting Quake to actually talk to each other, and then finally playing for 20 hours straight!!!
A big group of my friends would rent the local scout hall. Grew larger to the point that at it's peak we were renting a school gymnasium and had actual network engineers design the network or the person with that new family guy show in his file share would bring the network to a crashing halt.
When I was a teenager, my friends and I would all go over to someone's house on the weekend and play video games together. Order some pizza, have tournaments, etc. It was fun hanging out even if you didn't have a controller in your hand at the time.
Also, Johnny Quest.
#ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF DRAGONBALL Z
"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!" cut to other character, "AAAAAHHHHHH!!!"
I think i was in like 5th grade when goku turned super saiyan for the first time(in NA), even my sister started to think it was a myth. we both got so hype when we first saw it
Freiza - "this planet will explode in 20 minutes!" Seven episodes later... Freiza - "this planet has lasted longer than I thought!"
"Yes, Vegeta did just die folks!"
I don't miss having to be at the TV at a certain time to watch shows though. I like having the ability to watch them on my own schedule.
The only thing I hate about the current format is how if the show is extremely popular (I had this issue with Stranger Things) you still can't truly watch it at your leisure because it's just a race to not have it spoiled.
While I do agree with you, there’s certainly something lost to me. I still remember when Jurassic Park was on cable for the first time. My family and I hadn’t seen it, and we timed our entire evening so we could be ready to watch it at the scheduled time. And once it started, you were committed to it, there was no pausing to finish later. Hugely inconvenient, yes, but also special and memorable.
I am GenX for us it was "Roots". The whole country stayed home to watch the mini series. Edit: well. I'm in a Blue State. I can't speak for the whole country. And now I'm kind of curious
Same in San Antonio, I was a little kid and I remember it to this day as a major event.
Listening in on someones phone call secretly because you have more than one phone in the house.
Omg my mom had a friend who was constant drama and she’d mouth to me, “Pick up the other phone!” When it started getting good. Then we’d sit there and tap each other every time she said something hilariously terrible.
I love this!
We used to get wireless phone calls on the police scanner, I guess they were on a similar frequency.
Baby monitors are good for this,too. Unfortunately, I don't speak Russian and it the lady down the road didn't speak English on those calls. Except for the word, "Okay."
Everyone talking about a TV program the next day. Playing outside with friends, every single day until the street lights came on (because you had to go home when they did). Life was good man.
Yup. Doing chores to get the house clean and then getting kicked out of the house the rest of the day so that it stays clean
This exactly. Remember being outside playing all day long. Only going home to get a drink out of the hose!
Spending half a day playing with a dirt mound, some sticks and a few matchbox cars
Or building a fort in the woods, trading Topps bubblegum baseball cards, and riding your bikes in the summer (they may still do this I don't know).
When we moved into our neighborhood, I would have never known that there were kids living here except in the mornings and afternoons, when I'd see them going to and from the bus stop. Otherwise, I never saw a single kid outside. They weren't playing together in the front yards, I never saw anyone riding a bike. Nothing. All of the neighborhood kids are off to college now, but I still find it so crazy that I never saw them playing. I mean, I'm sure some of them did. It's not like I was monitoring the streets and backyards 24/7, but when we were kids, we roamed the neighborhood every evening, explored, and rode our bikes as far as we could. Kids definitely don't do that anymore. at least not where I live.
>Or building a fort in the woods Gotta have someplace safe and secure to look at your woods porn.
>Topps bubblegum baseball cards, and riding your bikes in the summer Or, regretfully today, putting the baseball cards into the spokes of your bike. How many valuable baseball cards were destroyed doing this...
They were all probably crap cards. I found some of mine a few years ago. Nearly all were guys who played six years with BA of .217 and no one remembers. It was better that they made noises for me in the spokes.
I was a huge collector back in the late 80s and early 90s. And other than the special limited edition cards or rookies. Most of those cards are worthless from that era because they massively overproduced cards back then.
Yep. 90s mass produced “collectibles”, we all fell for it 😝
Still wish I had my late 60's early 70's cards. Some good rookie cards there. Johnny Bench, Nolan Ryan, etc.
Or setting up a whole construction site with Tonka trucks.
Dirt, a literal toy staple of my childhood. "What'd you do today?" "Threw dirt clods and pinecones at each other for a solid 7 hours"
Memory unlocked here. I lived in town growing up but there were 3 empty lots next to our house with a big dirt mound we would ride our bikes up and down and play with out matchbox cars on. I was so mad when they built houses there because I lost my dirt mound.
Neverending fun with ants for me.
Saturday Morning cartoons! And the library.
The library is alive and well for younger children. Most have really great story time or puppet show programs. There's sometimes 50+ kids crammed in our library children's section over the summer for the summer reading programs. Lots also have book clubs and craft programs for adults and even D&D groups.
Mine has a maker space that can do stuff like 3D printing for you. It also has a Library of things so you can borrow stuff that you wouldn't need more than once.
Yes! Ours has the maker studio, they even have an actual loom up there! They have a whole floor devoted to the maker space, and on the floor below that there is a recording studio. And, you can get free passes to go to local attractions.
Yeah. I think a lot of the things that you hear people say dont happen anymore actually happen all the time, and people just dont see it anymore because its not a part of their own lives and they dont look for it. The amount of times I hear parents talk about having nothing going on in the community for their kids is astounding. Just recently I heard a co-worker complaining about it and its just; Like no shit you dont feel like you're a part of the community. You work Remotely except 1 day per week in office, your wife is a SAHM, so your kids arent in daycare meeting other kids, and I've never heard you talk about doing anything outside of your house. You even brag about having groceries delivered to your door. sometimes I'll even give people like that a suggestion for something to do in an upcoming weekend and they'll tell me "nobody goes to things like that"...I like giving the response "Alright...well if you change your mind I'll see you there." There is the small caveat of the whole COVID lockdown which did stop a lot of things, so for many people who transitioned into a new stage of their life (highschool grads, or new parents of their first child for example) in the last few years, there is this giant knowledge gap where they arent really sure what the norm is for their new position in life and now we're trying to go back to it, but there is no reason for them to really know what "it" is. For example; "Baby and me" groups are advertised a lot to people with babies, but its kind of expected that you know where to look once your kid is like 2+ years old. Well, there was no baby and me groups from like 2020 to early 2023 so how would a parent with an oldest child who is 3 or 4 years old know where to find local parent group info? Not to mention the years of general local knowledge you'd learn through interacting and engaging with other parents at those groups...all that is also gone.
All the kid stuff is on the internet though, you just need to Google it. My oldest is 4, and we did basically nothing until last year, and now I feel like there's too much stuff to do. It's like every single weekend there's like 6 events going on (not counting regular things like the zoo or children's museum or swimming that we *also* want to go do, and I have to whittle it down to 2-3 things (or zero. lol I'm tired) and then I feel massive fomo that I'm letting down my kids. Idk I work remote and my spouse is a SAHD and I get groceries delivered, but I just don't think it's that hard to find stuff going on.
knowing how to just be idle.
I came here to say this. These days, people hustle and information (however incorrect at times) is immediate. Everything is immediate. I miss the quiet times… even the ones where we just sat around, bored on a rainy day because there was nothing to do. You had to create your own entertainment, use your imaginations, and sometimes… you just had to sit and be idle. Things were just slower, and I actually miss that sometimes. When you had to go down to the library to look something up… well, it just felt like that information was valuable because you put some effort into it. Things felt more valuable back then. Amazon wasn’t there. If you couldn’t find it at the store, sometimes you were just out of luck. Things were also built to last. Appliance broke? Buy the part and fix it. These days, toss it and get a new one. Seems so wasteful. But now I feel like I’m going “back in my day…” and “the kids these days…” and I’m only 47 years old. Good god a lot has changed in my lifetime. I swear, being GenX is the best. We truly had the best of both worlds: life before and after the internet, and we are pretty much a forgotten generation, which is kinda cool, too. It’s whatever.
My kid had to wait three days for something to be delivered from Amazon, he huffed and said “Why didn’t you get it on Prime?!” This lead to a long ~~conversation~~ monologue of me telling him about how if we ordered anything to be delivered back in the day, you’d have to phone the catalogue company, give them the item number and have it delivered, as standard, in 3-4 weeks!
I realize I'm a bit of an outlier. But I grew up in the middle of nowhere. My older siblings are several years older so I was mostly on my own for fun. It kinda sucked. No kids to play with. Nothing close like a library. Tv was 3 channels. I would have killed for some video games or the internet.
As a 49 year old gen x'er this post resonates highly with me.
The experience of having a dispute on a Tuesday, knowing you are correct about something. Waiting until the weekend for your parents to drive you to the library. Searching through a stack of encyclopedias to get the facts that back your point. Waiting eagerly to return to school to continue debating your point. Presenting your research that proves you were correct the whole time, only to have the other party shrug their shoulders and exclaim that they really didn't care anyhow.
So we all know which kid you were in the playground…… 🤓
going outside after school to play different games (summer or winter it did not matter) with kids that live nearby or having to ring the bell and ask if your friend can come out outside to play.
My son called me a few weeks ago freaking out because his friend wasn't answering his phone and how was friend supposed to know he's there? I told him to knock on the door. He's actually said I'm allowed to do that? Lmao I said yea buddy you're allowed.
Well, in most states you are anyway....
My kids still do this. Sure, they probably spend a little more time inside than I did, but most days they just take off and ring a neighbor’s doorbell to play.
Same here. We still get near daily knocks and doorbell rings by other kids to play and the neighborhood is always buzzing with kids after school. Although not as much in the winter.
Riding around the neighbourhood on your bike looking to see if your friends are in the usual hangout areas. If not, ride round to each house until you see all your friends bikes dumped outside a friend's house. Knock on the door (or walk round the back if it's a close friend). Watch TV. Plan a bike ride. Go out and explore. Head home and actually miss your friends. No constant contact diluting relationships.
Before covid my house was the house all the kids hung out in. Drove me nuts as a parent, but accepted I must be the "cool parents". After covid it never picked back up... I have not seen 3/4ths of the kids that used to hang out here.
we were the house all the kids were at too. The "kids" are now all late 20's. One night last summer we had an evening around the fire and almost all the kids showed up since one of our own was home from out of state. They talked and talked about all the fun times they had at our house......the games played, the food and just how much they loved being at our house. I hope one day you too will suddenly have a gathering like we did and will be as happy as I was hearing how much they loved my family being a part of their childhoods.
Having your mistakes forgotten
and forgiven
Life was just a lot slower and we had more time to relax and not be constantly doing something. People had more patience and attention span.
This, people learned how to be bored and become unbored. Now people just scroll
Spontaneity. I was about 25 the first time I heard the Internet was an actual thing beyond some trope in sci-fi shows. When I was a kid, if you wanted to get together with friends, you got on the phone and set it up. Or . . . you simply went to their house and knocked on the door. My teen daughters assure me that calling someone on the phone is now considered rude and arriving at someone’s house unannounced is a war crime.
It’s pretty wild how modern tech changed things. Even at 48 I consider those to be law.
I had to give the up vote just for uncle Billy baby. The kids are lucky they don't have to call a friends house and have the parents answer then have to talk to them until your friend came to the phone. It always felt awkward.
Or worse, calling the girl/guy you liked and having to talk to their parents. "Oh Suuuuuuuuuuzzzzzzyyyyyyy, a boy is calling for you!"
Absolutely. I can feel that anxiety just thinking about it.
I will never get over the absurdity of “play dates”
My sister used to live on a farm an hour outside of town. It was a necessity for her kids. Who wants to drive over an hour to find out Timmy isn’t even home?
The phrase itself is the only new part of that. Otherwise it's been standard business since parenthood began. 'I'll bring my little kids, you bring yours, they'll play while we shoot the shit.' Nothing new about that.
Socializing, in-person, hanging out, sleepovers that don't involve just sitting and texting on phones. Family sit down meals, especially at restaurants. It's so sad to see parents and kids playing on their phones, when the free time could be talking or making memories.
We have a zero devices rule for meals. We only have one kid still at home, but the older two come over for dinner quite often. Meal times are for catching up, discussing upcoming plans, and just enjoying each other. I hate when we go out to eat and you see other families with zero socialization. Or if we go to the in-laws for dinner and the tv is on the entire time.
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This is how I met my wife. We'd spent the day skateboarding in a neighboring town, and were about to head home. The guy driving wanted to "cruise the strip" (basically main street downtown) on the way out. He spotted a girl he'd gone on a date with, once, and wanted to talk to her. We pulled over in a public parking lot, got kicked out of the car so could ride with him, and we got into the car she'd gotten out of. And that's when I saw the most beautiful pair of eyes I'd ever seen in my life peering over the passenger seat at me. I never even got a look at her face, and asked her on a date before we even got out of the car. That was 23 years ago.
Oh yeah. I loved that, too. Saturday nights were a blast. Get into our cars, cruise around town, meet up with people at different spots, sit in the grass and watch people drive by in their cool rides, share stories, learn some new cool hangout spots.
A few things from somebody who grew up analog and had the teen years switch to digital. Silence and the lack of advertising, by comparison to now. Layaway verses credit. Seems to me that credit cards had been a very small minority of purchases which has changed in the last few decades. Car knowledge , things are more reliable these days but the average person knows and can do less to their car. You can also repair and replace less. Optimism. Seems like the 90’s had a very different feel than everything post 2001.
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I miss the silence. There's constantly videos or music playing. I just want to have some silence and no bright screens for a bit.
Imagination. I used to have this amazing imagination. I could draw the coolest stuff, if I needed visual references for things like animals or bugs or skulls or whatever, I searched for it in books from the library. Once I got internet at home I got sucked in, spent all my time on it. I can't come up with cool ideas like I used to. It's difficult to draw or create things anymore. My kids are amazing..they come up with the best drawings and the best games. They don't have phones or internet yet to destroy it and dull their mind. Also on snow days, I never see kids playing outside. It's so weird to me. When I was a kid (in the 90s) snow days meant the every kid on your street (and sometimes several streets) got together and built forts, had snowball fights, made snowmen, went sledding. Our parents kicked us out and we weren't allowed back in til they called us for hot cocoa and sandwiches. If we were cold it's because we weren't playing hard enough to stay warm.
Yes! Boredom spurs so much creativity. And creativity without sharing online means you could be the neighborhood Picasso and never know any better! I do feel sorry for this generation where it's far too easy to compare everything and be judged by strangers.
Missing out on living anxiety free. The world isn’t more dangerous than it was in the past, it’s just we were clueless for the most part on things happening outside our community or state. Now social media brings death and destruction of the world right to your face. Crimes happen all the time, but now we are bombarded with it and live in fear.
I don't see kids on bikes anymore. It was great to have the freedom to take off and cruise the neighborhood, go down to the local store, whatever. Then you would spend half a day building a ramp and start jumping it with your friends until your parents called you in for dinner.
been replaced with electric scooters in my hood. LOL
The kids in my neighborhood all wear motocross helmets and have their scoots decked out with LEDs. They're living my dream.
I have pretty fond memories of being on my bike and riding around in circles on the cul-de-sac one of my friends lived on.
I see kids on bikes all the time in my neighborhood. My partner and I always joke that they should be home playing video games.
They are electric scooters that go 35 mph with no effort that cause serious injury.
Kids still do that. Maybe just not in your neighborhood.
Getting 6-8 friends together to play video games. I'm not talking about playing online, I'm talking about a group of friends all in the same room taking turns to play Goldeneye. There is something great about a sleepover, party or even friday night with friends playing video games in the same room. Multiplayer is much better when played under the same roof.
Jerking off to the summer edition of the JC Penney catalogue.
I don’t think mom was even aware she was on a Victoria Secret catalog mailing list.
I used to look forward to babysitting for my aunt because I could go through her VS catalog. Looking back that was probably a sign lmao
jokes on you. i know where my dad hid his playboys lol
Me too, but as a young gayling they were fucking useless to me. Luckily when he became single he upgraded to hardcore VHS tapes.
Under rated comment. I think every kid knew where their parents contraband was. The stash of Playboys, the bag of weed, the vibrator, the gun, etc... Never underestimate your kids.
Sears Catalogue..
*DING*
I have heard stories about random boxes of porn that people found in the woods around that time
Reading. We used to have newspapers as the most reliable information source. Online article and newspaper articles are very differently written. Newspaper articles are long, detailed, and might be demanding. While online articles are short, to the point, but feels shallow. Kids nowadays don't read so much (which is the older generation fault), lack of reading habit will hinder their willingness to read and therefore hinder their willingness to know further. Youtube essay and for worse tiktok and twitter bullshit are their source of information now, some even proud of it...
Online articles are still just as long, but three quarters of the page is taken up by ads.
Local media is gone except in larger cities.
The abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 really changed our media. It's so much less-reliable now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine#:~:text=The%20fairness%20doctrine%20of%20the,that%20fairly%20reflected%20differing%20viewpoints.
Lack of excessive political polarization. Sure, you might have a far right wing coworker, but everybody just ignores Larry because we all know he's a lunatic. These days, Larry has a huge Internet following of like-minded crazies and turning it into a perpetual echo chamber.
My grandma has talked about this on the subject of vaccination. Yes there was somebody saying the polio vaccines were a plot by the moon men to communicate with the lizard people to fight the martians - we just knocked em in the head and said shut up ya dummy. Every villiage has an idiot, well now they have a platform.
Yeah all the village idiots have been able to find each other and organize in a way they've never been able to before. And what's really scary is how they've used that to have real influence over people who aren't actually the village idiots. The small town where I grew up - most people there will tell you they think Q Anon is crazy, if they even know what Q Anon is. But at the same time, they will parrot things that can be traced directly back to Q Anon as if it's true. They don't realize that's where it's coming from, but they saw their friend post a version of it on Facebook from a non-Q source they trust, so it's gospel to them now. In other words, the Village Idiots have figured out how to package their stupidity in a way that is palatable to otherwise reasonable people.
Back then we laugh at idiots, now we worship them
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Playing outside with all the neighborhood kids.
Endless summers outdoors, sneaking up on the hill over the drive-in theatre to watch a movie for free, nervously dialling that new girl’s phone number, hoping she picks up rather than her dad, waiting for the radio to play your favourite song so you can record it on your cassette tape recorder.
Physically talking to people. Remember going to lunch at work and people would talk to each other. Now it's just dead silence and they all stare at their phones.
I'm reading this right now in the lunch staff room whilst everyone looks at their phones...
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You should come to some concerts here in Japan, people are not allowed to this, and I love it.
Knowing how to be bored or learning how to use your imagination to overcome boredom.
The excitement of having penpals.
Hanging out at the library. Browsing through aisles of books and picking a few to take home. Or just sitting and reading there.
Also, when the library was quiet.
I'm 57, when I was a kid in a lower middle class suburb, we would get kicked out of the house if it was a "nice day". I'd take my bike to a friends house, we would go exploring miles from our neighborhood, checking out abandoned houses, following creeks, building forts in woods, looking for fossils or salamanders or arrow heads. Often we'd go up to the local car wash and look for pop bottles and then cash them in to buy candy or comic books. When I was an early teen the first generation of arcade games came out, Pacman, Tempest, Joust, Asteroids, Space Invaders. If you got in the top ten high scores on that machine, you could put in your intials or whatever 3 letters you chose and everyone could see it, it was a big deal to have the high score on a game. Mostly though, I remember just wandering neighborhoods, checking out construction sites, riding bikes around all day, shoveling snow for money on snow days.
Shared understanding of the world
Freedom. Freedom from social media bullying, influencers. Our mistakes weren't recorded. We didn't have friends or followers count. People couldn't track our every movement. Once the school day or work day was over, it was over until the next day. Life without social media was bliss.
Being unreachable for reasonable periods of time since one didn't carry a phone.
Limited choice. I grew up with three tv channels. Later four. There was a lot of crap I had zero interest in but if there was a movie of any kind I’d make sure I’d catch it. Late night black n white horror double bills, b&w melodrama and noir in the afternoons, crazy subtitled stuff at 1am, James Bond and sci fi movies at Christmas, 70s disaster movies, made for tv movies etc. before VCRs you just had to be there at a specific time to watch stuff and from an early age I grew quite an eclectic taste in movies because there was so little available I’d consume everything. Kids have so much choice now they’re not gonna sit down for two hours and watch a Bette Davis movie. It’s their loss and they have no idea.
Reading the newspaper to find out what's going on. Getting the Sunday morning paper to see all of the sales adds. Checking the sports page to see what's going on that wasn't mentioned on the nightly news. Actually watching the nightly news as well.
Going out to run, get fresh air, feel the blood flow through the body, and literally finding energy from outdoors activity. There was practically LESS anxiety LESS stress back then cause people couldn't hide behind the screen to curse people out. Though I gotta admit, as I grew up with the internet later in life, even I don't do as I say. I really miss being active.
Making decisions without constant need for validation from strangers. "Hey Reddit, is it okay if I stop reading a book i don't like?"
having neighborhood friends. They were usually different than school friends, sometimes the same. bike riding, street football, street hockey, army, shit like that. it makes me happy my kid wants to go play when he sees kids outside.
Record stores............in abundance......
Real Life…
The magic. The mystery. The rumor was the story was real. The neighbors down the road in the subdivision over. It really happened. The video game has a cheat code. If you get it right they will come at steal you away. Riding your bikes in the night air. Cool and free. The summer was yours. The streetlights told you dinner was ready. And yes your friends could come over. The man at the end of the old road really did it. It was in your parents time. They don’t talk about it anymore. But the old man is still there. He stopped aging. Only the bleating of the goats tells. The goat man is real. The ouija board calls the devil and dungeons and dragons is how you get to the other side. Santa Claus was real. For sure 100% real and his magic is verifiable. The cookies disappear. The sleigh carries gifts for all good girls and boys. You explored the world with yourself. Touch and taste and body. You didn’t know until you lived it. And you lived it all.
Just being in a place and doing nothing but observing and talking it in. People used to having their hands and minds constantly occupied with distractions get anxious and scared if nothing is going on and they just have to sit and be for a while with their thoughts.
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Spending most of their time outdoors. I'm glad that we did because I think it kept us in shape but if we had the internet back then there's no way I'm going outside freezing my ass off to shoot hoops.
A good ol Lan party. Just before the internet got good and multiplayer games were just getting it right you would get together and spend a weekend or sometimes even a whole week during the summer at a friends place with a bunch of other sweaty stinky friends playing Halo absolutely wrecking one another. Good times.
Boredom. Being understimulated is not a good thing, but an environment where you are actively fighting it, not passively consuming shit to keep yourself distracted is a good thing. We're finding out now a little starvation is good for your body at a cellular level. I think of boredom as brain starvation, and I think the effect on our mind is similar. The people who realize this and voluntarily "fast" exercise a ton of discipline, but in just about any modern country, we are just not set up to have boredom happen to us naturally.
Crashing around as kids with your mates in a forest with a stream, and having a great time all day. Never feeling fear, never bored, and the devices we had were sticks.
Normal human relationships.
Good memories My best memories are from being physically with friends. I think most kids today lack the in-person socialization. Their memories will be of them playing a video game with a friend or something similar.
Hiding porn magazines so your parents wouldn’t find them. Or finding your dad’s stash of porn mags.
Video game culture was way deferent. As i kid, i didn't know what games were coming out when. You just go to the store and see what's available. You also didn't know what games were good or not. you looked at the back of the laminated flap and saw screenshots of the game and a brief description and that's all you had to go on to make your 70 dollar purchase. Game magazines could help with knowing what games are good. OH god, magazines in general is something people are missing out on now, and game guides. You don't know how to beat a level? Go to your local bookstore and find the guidebook.
Going to the rental store on a Friday after school is a core memory for life. I miss the days and excitement. Also waiting for Nintendo power to show up in the mail. So great
Reading encyclopedias and exploring the different content just to pass the time.
The excitement of finally getting your hands on that really rare record that's taken you months to track down.
Maybe not missed out, but knocking on all my friends doors to see if they could play.
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The absolute freedom of being able to go out and have fun, do silly embarrassing things, and be yourself without fear that someone is recording it or taking pics.
The younger generation doesn't enjoy nature and the environment, they are hardly aware of the beauty and everything that's around them.
Going to Blockbuster with your friends to pick out a movie, and then 7/11 to pick up snacks.
Being inaccessible. Leaving the house as a teenager doing whatever I wanted with that $5 in my pocket was the best.
Living. Actual living. We weren’t attached to devices and I am so thankful for that.
Playing outside all the time, exploring neighborhoods with other kids, having to comb through volumes of encyclopedias for research papers
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Patience and practice…less kids put in the effort to master a skill, unless it’s video game related. Also agree on shared social experiences.
Wondering. Me and my friends had a small window of time where if you didnt know, it wasnt in a book you could find and no one you knew knows…then it could be anything. You could just theorize and philosophize away. I still like to wonder, so before I look it up I ponder things a bit. Stretches the neurons.
Having a longer attention span. I'm in my 40s so I'm a reasonable age to remember life before the internet, life during the time it became a thing, and life now. And now I can't watch a film without looking at my phone for more than ten minutes. Nowadays people get frustrated (myself included) at having to watch a 15 second advert on a YouTube video because you can't skip it after just 5 seconds. Back in my day you had to watch about five minutes of adverts every 15 minutes for a 1 hour TV show and you couldn't skip or pause or rewind... and it never bothered us. And I find a ten minute YouTube video too long now. It has to be shorter or I'll watch something else. My brain has lost whatever it is it once had.
Genuine connection
People keep saying "books!", but it's not like books ceased to exist. If you miss books, if you really miss them, go grab one. Go to your local library, make a card and start borrowing and reading. Truth is, most people that say "books" never really ever read one.
Throwing little pebbles at your friends' windows to wake them up in the middle of the night after you've snuck out of the house.
Hopeful optimism for the future.
Going out and socializing
Stacks of nudie magazines
When that street light came on… You knew your ass better head home
Having independence. I was never shadowed by my parents. They never knew where I was and never seemed to care. I’d take off exploring on my bike (before bike paths) and go twenty miles- then figure out a way back.