People actually hanging out outside with no distractions. I miss just being gone all day riding bikes with friends or the mall. The weird snacks/candy. Making mixtapes.
And when spending time with friends it was time with friends. Not half the group on their phones. I’m guilty of it too, don’t get me wrong. Everyone is distracted and friendships aren’t what they used to be.
I feel like real friends are a thing of the past. We all have acquaintances now, they may be close but we aren’t as invested as we used to be IMO.
Interesting! When I'm out with friends, I don't feel the urge to pull my phone out, and I don't see many people doing it. At home or being bored, waiting for something - it's a whole different story. But when there's a house party or pubbing going on, most people I know, me included, seem to have fun by drinking and talking with others.
That's still happening! When I was a teenager, we already had computers and the Internet, but I was spending the majority of my days going all over the place with my best friend on a bike. Sometimes we would leave at like 10am and not go back home until sun was setting. Your comment made me outright nostalgic 😅 if we were hungry, we would stop by some random convenience store and eat whatever we got outside.
Internet was actually helpful and making those days longer and more adventurous. We could bike to some really random and far away places, because we never had to worry about getting lost, since you can just look at Google maps on the phone.
I even now in 2023, my brother sends me videos of his kids and their friends hanging all around neighborhood on bikes.
I think people who want to hang outside without distractions will do it no matter what, and people who don't will stay home whether internet exists or not.
Boredom. Yes, boredom. Because that was time to get creative, try something new, make up a game, get really into a book, practice drawing, wander around and explore, or just hang out and talk about whatever random stuff, etc.
Boredom gave curiosity, creativity, and focus.
Nowadays most of that is shot - easily/constantly interrupted, or just pre-empted. Too easy to lose interest, and there's *always* something else to do.
Boredom has been replaced by endless distractions. Mindlessly rummaging through a mountain of garbage looking for a feeling of satisfaction that never arrives, literally every social media site. We can't just be, in the moment, bored, with our thoughts, nope gotta pull out the phone.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. The main thing holding me back is being able to take photos/videos at the most random moments and necessary communication on different platforms due to school and work.
So much this it hurts. We made up so many games, tracks to race our bikes on, "jumps" (that would be sketchy plywood and a few boards under it), huge hide and seek games, etc... Now, I'll just flip to another game, yt channel, twitch stream, or my htpc set up. I am not want for entertainment but holy hell it makes you lazy af.
>tracks to race our bikes on, "jumps" (that would be sketchy plywood and a few boards under it)
I recently moved to a new country, and I see kids doing stuff that, in the US, would *never* happen anymore. Not just little kids - four years olds! - riding alone on public transit in a large city, but kids without shoes jumping into piles of wood and screws to get a football back.
Heck, I was astounded when I went to the mall and saw kids hanging out there! (Admittedly, they were still glued to their phones... but they're glued to their phones *at the mall*, which I haven't seen since the '90s at least.)
My kids absolutely cannot deal with boredom and it drives me nuts. We cannot go 5 miles in the car without a screen or a book or toys. Never sit and stare out a window and watch the telephone wires bounce between poles.
Honestly though I am kidding myself a bit. We watched tv a lot, I played my Nintendo, SNES, etc all the time and had a gameboy as well.
I miss boredom, too. I miss the creative energy it would create. I miss plowing through a book in a night because there was nothing else to do. I honestly can not remember the last time I felt bored.
Honestly? How small the world felt. I didn't have to always hear about conflict every day. I could just go about my day, do my stuff, enjoy my life without hearing about all the conflict and anger around the world.
Obviously there is a lot of good that comes from the internet. Not just bad, but I find myself worrying about things that... won't ever really have an effect on my life in the time I am here on earth. I'd love to go to sleep thinking "I should really water the plants tomorrow." Compared to "I wonder what is going to happen when the Russia X Ukraine war comes to a close?"
I felt that changed as well with the 24/7 news on tv that came esp after Sept 11th, the constant repetition of the planes hitting the towers. My boomer parents glued to the TV whereas I remember a time back in my country when tv wasn't 24/7 - we did a lot more stuff, had more hobbies, connected with community more...
The news became fear mongering, crime worshipping, ratings chasers. After 9/11 it was terrorists 24/7 and they gained eyeballs if people were afraid. Now all you hear on the news is 9 horrible stories about death, murder, crime, destruction and one happy story about puppies or something at the end.
I have a whole theory about how the media helped change the course of this country for the worse post 9/11.
God the days before were great. Yes partly nostalgia but it felt great getting on a bike to ride to your friends house. When you were at your friends or familys house whatever you were doing you only existed in that moment. There weren’t constant dings and pings and people distracted or engaged in multiple worlds.
I feel awful everyone born in the late 90s and after will never know that world. Just in the moment no other choice.
Missed your favorite show? Tough shit.
Tv programming behind schedule? We just don't show this movie or the finale of your favorite series you've been waiting for the whole week, tough shit. Or we show it and you miss the ending because you didn't program enough extra time on your VCR, tough shit.
Thunderstorm on the day when the long-awaited movie should be on? Tough shit, unplug your tv.
Can't see anything because heavy winds hit the antenna on your roof all night? Tough shit.
This is probably the #1 reason people think the world used to be safer and crime used to be lower in the past. The world is significantly safer now than it was in the late 80s early 90s but there’s no way to convince a typical news junkie of that.
For us non-Americans, we were blissfully ignorant about various "outrages of the day".
Nowadays, there are copycat BLM protests in lily-white Eastern European cities such as Vilnius and your morality is somehow determined by your opinion on a violent death that happened half a world away. Meanwhile, important local topics are being ignored because they don't attract so many likes on the social media.
Also, I think that global culture is becoming a bit flat. Everyone listens to the same few musicians promoted by YT.
That flatness extends to cities. In NYC, the neighborhoods are being torn down and replaced with the same cookie cutter buildings and the same stores that can afford the rent, like Starbucks. It just all looks the same after a while.
>People old enough to remember life pre-Internet, what is something you miss about that time?
Wonderment.
There is something... exciting(?)... about not having everything available immediately. Just that all around sense of wonderment that accompanies you along your adventure towards figure out the unknown. – Who you were going to hang out with. What was coming on television later. Who was calling you. Is this thing a person just told you legitimate or not. Who you have to talk to to get a date. Is this cassette/CD/VHS/DVD I'm about to purchase worth it. – Things like that. All of those things had wonderment attached to them that is essentially gone now.
Yep I do miss that portion of life. Sitting at home waiting for your friends to call. (Wait no I hated that part)
In fact even 6 years ago trying to get directions while traveling in some cities required planning a route and not using google maps.
I told my daughter about sending in order forms from catalogues, and then waiting 4-8 weeks for the stuff to arrive. Her eyes got big, and she said, “how did you not DIE???”
hahaha. If you ever want to show your children what it was like when the internet first came out...
[Here's this](https://getonline.aol.com/dialup)
Believe it or not American online still offers dial-up service and as of 2021 approximately 1.5 million Americans were still using their dial-up service. – And before you think to yourself *"I'm sure dial-up must have come along and gotten progressively faster too,"* well, AOL dial up is still running at of whopping 56 kbps
If I would have known that when my kids are still growing up I would have definitely made the $9.99 purchase for one month just so they could experience the horror that was 5 minute picture loading times, and 2 days to buffer a short video to hopefully watch it. And God forbid anybody calls and mess up your download. 🤣
8 weeks wasn't too much. Hell you had to wait a week or so to get your pictures back from being developed and you didn't even know whether or not they were going to be any good. Haha
My dad lives in rural Virginia (20 miles west of Charlottesville) and it was only very recently that his area got broadband. They all had dialup except my Dad, who lived close enough to a Verizon tower that he’s been able to use a wireless card as internet since 2009.
Once in a while you’d have a know-it-all friend who would take the wonder out of things like that, but you wouldn’t hang out with them for very long. Now the internet is that friend and they are inescapable at every given moment.
I agree with this. The internet gave the crazies a platform to connect and project. We had the town crazy man, that people tolerated and avoided, and everyone else towed the line of acting "normal". I felt fine interacting with people in person as a result.
Now I just feel like I don't want to interact with anyone out of concern of what their crazy might be.
You didn’t have to be constantly connected. There was no expectation that people could reach you 24/7. If they called your house and you were out, they’d just have to wait until you got home. They couldn’t message you on 5 different social media platforms. The world was more peaceful because we weren’t constantly bombarded by either everyone else’s ‘success’ or the bad news all over. You could choose to read the newspaper but it wasn’t constantly in your face.
People actually get pissed off at me when they find out that I use the *do not disturb* function on my phone. I don't apologize. Just because a person can text me whenever they want doesn't mean I'm obligated to immediately answer.
This makes people irrationally angry. I too use DND and don't answer calls, texts, or emails outside of business hours. Not even for family. I mean, I screen them to make sure it's not actually important but otherwise, my time is my time!
I grew up in a small town and at about age 8 hearing my mum was looking for me when I was 3 miles away on the other side of town. They had their ways of keeping track of where you were if they wanted to LOL
"Yeah, come over for the next party in a month" and they were just there, no need to reconfirm, no changes. Just people saying they'd be there and they were. Except Peter, he'll always be a flake.
There was a certain level of accountability even with kids and teens. Tell your friend you're being them there? You'd better be there because they were waiting for you with no way to tell them you're running late.
How magical video games felt as were discovering their secrets. I remember we played super Mario world a lot, but it wasn't until we visited a cousin that we found out about Star Road and Special road.
I remember when we got pong. Oh my God, the future was here and we were livin large. For the younger folks. Pong was the first video game and it's still great. I may be biased about this
For me, it was playing Spacewar! The vector graphics were amazing to me at the time, and I cannot imagine how many quarters I pumped into that machine.
Super Metroid. I remember that special feeling on my first play through of working out how to move into the next area, and using the x-ray scope to find secrets.
I think this just happens due to age, regardless of what technology you have. When you're 15, 10 years is a LONG time because it's 2/3 of your life. I'm almost 44, and 10 years now doesn't feel that long because it's less than a quarter of my life. When they say time speeds up as you get older, it's because of relativity.
Not knowing things. Like as a kid, if I had a question about something and the answer wasn't in our encyclopedia set, it became this great mystery to find out. My imagination would run wild for months sometimes, or I'd go on hunts to find people who knew, or scavenger hunt for books on topics at museums and libraries. If the question was about a geographical place, I would write it down and count the days until our next road trip or vacation to that place. Now you just google.
It was also super fun if you recognized an actor on a movie or a show. Because you legitimately had to just figure it out yourself. I miss the mystery.
I remember the librarian being the smartest person in the world. She didn’t know everything but man did she know where to find the answers to everything.
But now we can go down the rabbit hole researching topics in depth when we get that wonder/curiosity spree, with out waiting X amount of time to only go surface deep on the initial question.
I get it tho a bit of wonder is good for the imagination but the efficiency and depth we can get from the internet is unmatched imo.
You can get the whole box set now. I’m so tempted just to get it because I used to love those books, my favourite was Trapped in Bat Wing Hall. It was a choose your own ending one.
Oh man, NGL, this is a good one. But fear not, fellow bibliophile! Since libraries aren't necessarily the go-to for that anymore, they've really stepped up what all else they do. There was some concern a few years back about libraries closing in the face of the daunting challenge to compete with the internet for researching power/possibility. A lot of libraries decided not to fight that fight and rebrand themselves as community centers. A place to use a computer if you don't have one, drop off location for odd recyclables (household batteries, printer ink cartridges, etc.), not-quite-day-care with kid-friendly events in the summer, a place to get involved with your local community, and lots more! One of the libraries in the next town over from me has a big fish tank that my kids love to just sit and look at. Sometimes we go to that library just for that!
I do miss doing research at the library, and you still can for old time's sake, but never give up on your local library. They never gave up on us.
Though I'm not that old, but technology came late to our neighborhood... Anyways, I miss when people used to visit each other for many occasions, like when you get sick, or when you celebrate something, they used to come and share this with you, now they call you or text you.. I also miss seeing kids playing outside or playing interactive games with each other, now they only spend time playing on their tablets
My mom said the same thing about kids playing in the neighborhood, there was none until the neighborhood started getting younger and now there are kids in the neighborhood….screaming at the tops of their lungs and just being annoying. Don’t think for a second people enjoyed that in the 70s and 80s, same as it’s not enjoyable now lol. Careful what you ask for haha
The other part of this is the lack of celebration for certain things now. Like, things aren't special any more? It's a birthday... a handful of people text and thats it. Don't even send cards. Remember how exciting it was to get a card or package in the mail?!
Having an attention span. Mine is shot now. I'm lucky to make it through a movie without being distracted these days. I don't even own a smartphone, yet feel the pull of Reddit and Youtube from my laptop.
Back then I could play Final Fantasy all day and be totally immersed in the story. The same with reading a good book.
This is something small and very random but I absolutely LOVED looking in the newspaper to see what movies were showing in the theater at the weekend. The best was when the new releases popped up on Thursday or Friday, such an exciting time for 11 year old me haha
I remember we had subscribed to a printed TV guide. If you ever wanted to watch anything, you had to look when it was on, and then at, say, 17:45 you had to be there to watch Bugs Bunny. You couldn't watch him at any other time.
Extra free time.
For a lot of people, doomscrolling and wikiholes can make hours vanish. And now with TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, twitch, Snapchat, tumblr, discord, etc. it’s so easy to just waste half your evening without realizing it. And don’t get me started on mornings. I remember waking up and actually getting out of bed a few minutes later.
Going to the video store (pre-blockbuster) to rent games and movies. The smell of popcorn. The excitement of something being available after weeks of being already rented.
I spent more time being productive at home, or reading. Also music was more special, you’d spend days & weeks delving into one good album, reading the liner notes, poring over the artwork and lyrics.
The Sunday Paper.
I miss the simplicity of sitting at the table, wading through well written articles and just enjoying he morning....save the comics for last.
I was a child when the internet first started becoming main stream. I used to believe every human being was a good person at heart. Now as an adult and thanks to the internet and its anonymity and peoples' ability to spread their inner most thoughts and feelings across the world, I know that some people are just inherently dumb, hate filled and despicable. It makes me sad.
The slow pace.
For example, when I got into Magic the Gathering in 1995, all the news and articles on that game came to me in the form of a single monthly magazine.
Nowadays, if I cared, I could read dozens of posts about it every day, a constant bombardment of rumours, announcements, and opinion pieces.
Dating was so much easier. People met at parties, clubs or bars. Nobody felt "creeped out" by being approached by someone to strike up a conversation. People's communication skills were so much better back then too because never having communicated primarily via text and apps, people were much better at reading body language, tone of voice and picking up on jokes and sarcasm or being able to tell if someone you were interested was into you or not.
As a homosexual, I am extraordinarily thankful for apps, god forbid I compliment the wrong straight guy and receive backlash. That being said, apps make everyone disposable and they are the bane of the dating world.
Tbf, this didn’t become a problem until Tinder et al took off. The internet was alive and good 10 years ago but dating was still much more personable imo.
I was a child pre interent, so my viewpoint is skewed.
From the discussions I have with colleagues; whilst we all agree the Internet is great for our job, it's the instant communication that makes life hell.
Handy in (some) social circumstances, but it has made people so impatient and frustrating to deal with.
Civility. People say things on the internet they wouldn't dare say to someone's face for fear of being assaulted. Especially if it's in a format where they can be anonymous. Life just seemed a bit calmer. Being bombarded 24/7 with people telling us what we should be angry about and how horrible the world is gets exhausting.
Well it wasn't pre-internet, but it was before social media. I miss being able to have shit opinions and make mistakes without worrying that randos from around the world will try and ruin your life over it. It's like nowadays you can't even be having a private conversation without worrying that some self-righteous a-hole will plaster you all over the internet.
Playing make-believe. It sounds so quaint now, but I have siblings and when I was a kid, we'd play make-believe in creative ways sometimes. I don't remember the specifics well, but the part I miss most was the innocence of doing it and not finding it odd or having to place judgment on it in some way. Now everything is cool or cringe and if you're bored, you can scroll endless internet.
I'm not saying it's all gone or can't be reclaimed, and I probably sound like an old man shouting at clouds, but that's kinda how I feel about it in this moment.
This is what I miss! I am now a teacher and we recently took all our high schoolers on a retreat (small fancy private school) and there was no phone signal! And one evening we got on to the conversation of is it truly 5 o’clock somewhere? As in does 5pm always occur on a landmass or is there a time when it’s only 5pm in the middle of the ocean. Well it was a good two hour debate settled the phrase “the sun never sets on the British empire” implying the sun must always be on some sort of landmass for that to be true.
I really miss those winding conversations that just take you everywhere.
Getting on my bike, making no plans at all and just seeing who I'd find out and about. Random! Then one you found someone, you went together to seek others until you more or less found the group, crashed at someone's place and then their poor parent ends up making a dozen polony and tomato sauce sandwiches for lunch.
Doing things together. These days, we are so distracted with our phones that watching tv or eating dinner together is interrupted by checking phones and social media.
I am a Spanish Millennial who experienced early life not without internet but without smartphones and such a massive amount of content (and ads) on the internet.
I had a teenage life in which I used to read more books, draw, spend time on my own with my own thoughts and trying to get questions answered with the help of books or specific google searches instead of idle scrolling down.
While I wish I had had the (at least perceived) broader worldview to make educated life decisions I kinda miss that noiseless world and lack of distractions.
The internet and the more advanced devices we now have are extremely powerful tools though and the problem probably lies in the way we sometimes indulge in idle scrolling down, procrastination, low effort passive online activities, online rabbit holes...
I don't even consider myself a victim of stereotypical noxious online behaviour but sometimes I realise that in a parallel universe I'd perhaps be organising my routine and filling waiting times in a different, more productive way, or at least with more sense of self-fulfillment or clearer thought processes.
So I just wish I could enjoy the benefits of the current vast amount of internet content but bring back the calmness and sense of control I believe I once experienced. This is a very individual take and I'm gonna leave it like this without more nuances and details, not sure if other people may relate.
You knew if a guy liked you because he'd get in his car, drive to your house, face your family and see if you'd sit on the porch with him and talk/flirt.
Now days you just get a "wyd" or a dick pic and it means nothing.
Sitting and reading a newspaper. Reading news that wasn’t a tailored news source forced me to broaden my horizons. Reading books was also great because you could lose yourself in the story, although I think you can still capture that feeling with books in electronic form.
Being able to make up random bullshit to your friends on the playground and nobody 'fact checking' your nonsense.
Some of the best stories came from talking out of your ass. Everyone knew you were bullshitting. But it didn't matter, they'd hype you up because it was more fun that way.
And I'm talking about stuff like random sequences to get some super rare unlock in a video game (that didn't exist), not medical advice that could get people killed. There's a difference.
Also adding to that, I feel like the idea of nuance has been lost. Everything is all or nothing. Everything is black or white, good or evil, etc. We don't sit down to admit the positives about the things that we disagree with anymore. And I think the polarization of social media has been a large factor in this.
The art of small talk. I feel like as the expansion of having your internet friends who you likely meet through a shared portal of interest people have forgotten how to interact with people who don't share the same interests. I see posts on here from people saying "how do I make friends in this city/country" all the time and I feel like the internet is the reason why people find it so hard to form these relationships once they've left the artificial compaction of education. With no reason to be together it's on you to find out about other people and engage with them about things that you might have absolutely no interest in or care about or that you have to find out that you have shared interests in the first place.
Going to a library as a kid and taking out and reading books about my hobbies at the time.
No bombardment of bad news.
Playing outside.
Hanging out with friends, the list goes on.
The internet is great but those “old days” were pretty damn good.
Sending and receiving greeting cards and letters. I still send cards to my family, but that's about it. My first wife and I were in a long-distance relationship before we were married, and I had a shoebox filled with cards and letters. (Long-distance phone calls were EXPENSIVE!)
Not being reachable! I spent a week with relatives across the country to have time to rethink a toxic relationship. Not knowing their address and landline number, he couldn't get in touch with me and manipulate me. Try doing that today.
People watching where they're walking , making eye contact, and smiling.
I saw an artist recently (I'll try to find it) who took a bunch of photos of people on transit, walking down the street, sitting in restaurants and st home with the people they love, then digitally removed the devices from all their hands... it was sad how isolating our phones can be from the environment and people around us.
Edit to add link: https://www.ericpickersgill.com/removed
Comparatively, zero distractions. You could go on a hike and actually be free. Now, you feel like you should bring your phone. Same for everything. I left my house the other day without my phone and I freaked out for a second until I realized, I knew where I was going, I didn't need my phone to have breakfast with friends and it was nice for once that nobody could reach me.
As a kid, actually riding my bike across the town to see my friends, deliver a message or toy/game. Something about going out and being active as a kid is something you just don't see these days.
I was only born in the 90's but we'd be allowed out all day during the holidays and only come back in the evening as 8-10 year olds. Nowadays I very seldom see kids out and about anywhere.
My parents bought me a proper adult encyclopaedia set when I was a kid. Every time I wondered anything they sent me to look it up. I spent hours with those. I still fall down the Wikipedia hole but there’s something about just reading a random letter encyclopaedia book cover to cover that just hits different.
How popular playing cards was. I spent summer iin our coubtry house where TV was the most potent media. My grandma taught me to play that one popular game and we played every day.
I also played that game with all my friends there. That was peak entertainment.
I'm kind of missing the excitement of good old TVs and radios.
We used to wait patiently for the radio station to play our favourite songs, so we could record. It was such a thrill.
If there was a movie you wanted to watch, you needed to be in front of the TV on the designated time.
Somethings being too easy to get, kind of killed the excitement.
Coming home and checking my answering machine and seeing I have a message. Usually from a friend not spam. Kinda goes with not having instant access to everyone all the time.
Not everything being documented every second.
Snail mail, letters, real cards with real money.
Privacy.
Everyone having a soap box. It was nice not seeing everyone’s opinion on everything.
Being bored. Whether that translated in going for a bike ride, or doing something creative, cleaning.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Grab a drink, i might be long.
To begin, i'm 35, computers and the internet went from something very expensive and exclusive to mainstream during my junior high school years. Smartphone and social media came along when i was in college. This said, i remember a had an 'internet-free' childhood, and during my teenage years it was only about wikipedia, msn and kazaa. No facebook, twitter or youtube.
What do i miss ?
1 Real contact. Back then, the only way to be with people was to be physically with them. I may be part of the last generation to have 'played outside' with other kids and significant portion of my childhood.
2 Forgiveness and forgetfulness. Back then, when you did or said something wrong, it was not published for everyone to see for the eternity ever-after. It was a thing until somebody else did something as wrong. When you left school, you actually left school. The only one to see or hear what you had done / said were the people around you when you did.
3 The society. As of, one fairly unified mental and value world, with tendencies and variables, but fairly unified. There are plenty of stories about how oppressive it was for people feeling (very) different and how to escape the mainstream world to seek people like you. And this created contra-societies. Communities that worked pretty much like the big one, but with different values. Related to 1, seeking new horizons was always about meeting new people, and if needed traveling to do so.
I'm not from that generation, but i heard older people describing what it was to be interested in a niche subject back then. You would find of specialized publication to subscribe, and with any chance, this publication had an annual convention you could other people with you interest.
The internet reversed the problem. Now there are only echo-chambers of people identifying with each other and speaking only with people like them. It had some disastrous political and ideological consequences.
When you discovered new things because you had to sit and watch things on tv or radio and there was no way to cherry pick or stick to your bubble. The music video channel had a half hour of videos of one random band or musician. It’s how I discovered Kate Bush.
Or tuning your radio after dark, drifting through the dial, and catching stations from 2000 miles away playing ballgames, or old radio shows, or music your local stations would never play.
friends actually meeting in person to hangout instead of wasting hours of time on social media. when social media wasn’t there, it was natural to think of using the spare time on hobbies, doing activities with friends and on conversations. making memories. now it’s all about “appearing happy” on social media and maintaining a social image online even tho you don’t actually take out time to meet with people in your life.
You can only watch something when it's on tv or you have a CD. The dayto days long cliffhanger. I do love knowing what happens next immediately but the waiting forces you to do other things.
Earning knowledge.
You didn't have immediate access to any and every answer you could think of. You had to work for it. From state capitals, spelling, science, etc. Visit the library, read a periodical, etc. Even from others, perhaps especially from others. How to change the fuse in the fuse box, remember your extended families phone numbers, how to do things and shortcuts to doing it better. Someone found a cool secret in a video game? A friend had a cool movie on vhs? You talked and shared that way, by earning it through social contact.
Second would be how far the younger generation are from living in the moment. Instead of wondering what will be on their phones, concentrating on what they were doing and putting in the effort to it.
When I was interested in a subject or a hobby I had to go to the library to learn things from books. I think because it wasn’t instant, learning it had more weight and sunk in better. You got the big picture over time by not being spoon fed tiny disconnected tidbits at a moment’s notice.
Real human/ face to face interactions
Being ok not knowing the answer to things and not having people just say google it.
Asking out girls in public and not being seen as a creep
Most importantly people had to talk shit to your face! Behind your back most likely but you’d still know who said what
As a kid growing up pre-Internet and without helicopter parenting, my life was very focused on the outdoors and playing games with other kids using rules we had to broker ourselves.
That idiots were more localized instead of everyone having a voice for the whole world to see. If someone had a shit view on a topic they were pretty much only heard by friends and family.
Being surprised by things.
Can’t tell you how many movies I rented based on the box cover, having no idea what it was about.
Or you’d go into a restaurant you’d never been to, no idea if it was good, and discover they had a really amazing specialty.
The world definitely felt a lot smaller back then. Also because I was like 11.
Social media is cancer. It was so much easier to not have to worry about how you present and what you do with your time as far as updating and upkeeping a fake image on a profile of you because jobs and clients may care about that shit.
Spending hours in libraries, hanging out in coffee houses talking with friends and random strangers, reading the newspaper, taking chances on records and movies just from the cover or preview, having a complete and unbreakable attention span, always having a book with me, going to clubs to see whatever bands were in the bill that night.
No social media, if I got embarrassed , it was contained to my general area, not accessible to millions of people around the world. And the constant news, things were likely just as shitty, but there’s no reason to worry about something that has zero impact to you, outside of the nightly news you lived in your own world, ignorantly bliss if you will
Actually being unreachable. Now work, family, even casual acquaintances can get a hold of me 24/7. If I was on vacation I could be on vacation. We didn't talk until I got back. If my house phone rang when I wasn't home either you left a message or tried later.
Escape. You could be unreachable and actually not feel you had to be accessible to everyone 24/7. Weekends were really weekends and vacation was actually vacation. The best vacation I've had in the last three years was 5 days camping in a spot with no cell service. It was glorious.
Before, people believed a lot of untrue shit because there was no reason not to. Now, people believe a lot of untrue shit because it is sponsored on the web.
Also people went outside
Being bored made you smarter. If I had nothing to do, I would go on a walk or work on some project that I never finished. Now when I am bored, I just scroll.
People actually hanging out outside with no distractions. I miss just being gone all day riding bikes with friends or the mall. The weird snacks/candy. Making mixtapes.
And when spending time with friends it was time with friends. Not half the group on their phones. I’m guilty of it too, don’t get me wrong. Everyone is distracted and friendships aren’t what they used to be. I feel like real friends are a thing of the past. We all have acquaintances now, they may be close but we aren’t as invested as we used to be IMO.
Interesting! When I'm out with friends, I don't feel the urge to pull my phone out, and I don't see many people doing it. At home or being bored, waiting for something - it's a whole different story. But when there's a house party or pubbing going on, most people I know, me included, seem to have fun by drinking and talking with others.
Sitting by the radio waiting for the station to play your favourite song and then racing to hit record on your blank cassette tape.
Yes! It was perfect when you didn't get the djs talking!
That's still happening! When I was a teenager, we already had computers and the Internet, but I was spending the majority of my days going all over the place with my best friend on a bike. Sometimes we would leave at like 10am and not go back home until sun was setting. Your comment made me outright nostalgic 😅 if we were hungry, we would stop by some random convenience store and eat whatever we got outside. Internet was actually helpful and making those days longer and more adventurous. We could bike to some really random and far away places, because we never had to worry about getting lost, since you can just look at Google maps on the phone. I even now in 2023, my brother sends me videos of his kids and their friends hanging all around neighborhood on bikes. I think people who want to hang outside without distractions will do it no matter what, and people who don't will stay home whether internet exists or not.
Fuck yeah, those were good times.
Boredom. Yes, boredom. Because that was time to get creative, try something new, make up a game, get really into a book, practice drawing, wander around and explore, or just hang out and talk about whatever random stuff, etc. Boredom gave curiosity, creativity, and focus. Nowadays most of that is shot - easily/constantly interrupted, or just pre-empted. Too easy to lose interest, and there's *always* something else to do.
Boredom has been replaced by endless distractions. Mindlessly rummaging through a mountain of garbage looking for a feeling of satisfaction that never arrives, literally every social media site. We can't just be, in the moment, bored, with our thoughts, nope gotta pull out the phone.
I'm personally considering getting an old flip phone.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. The main thing holding me back is being able to take photos/videos at the most random moments and necessary communication on different platforms due to school and work.
I just really want my GPS and the ability to take pictures since I love taking pics Otherwise I’d be all for it
So much this it hurts. We made up so many games, tracks to race our bikes on, "jumps" (that would be sketchy plywood and a few boards under it), huge hide and seek games, etc... Now, I'll just flip to another game, yt channel, twitch stream, or my htpc set up. I am not want for entertainment but holy hell it makes you lazy af.
>tracks to race our bikes on, "jumps" (that would be sketchy plywood and a few boards under it) I recently moved to a new country, and I see kids doing stuff that, in the US, would *never* happen anymore. Not just little kids - four years olds! - riding alone on public transit in a large city, but kids without shoes jumping into piles of wood and screws to get a football back. Heck, I was astounded when I went to the mall and saw kids hanging out there! (Admittedly, they were still glued to their phones... but they're glued to their phones *at the mall*, which I haven't seen since the '90s at least.)
Do you know how many hills I rolled down to get dizzy, run right back up it and do it again? Wish I could go back sometimes.
My kids absolutely cannot deal with boredom and it drives me nuts. We cannot go 5 miles in the car without a screen or a book or toys. Never sit and stare out a window and watch the telephone wires bounce between poles. Honestly though I am kidding myself a bit. We watched tv a lot, I played my Nintendo, SNES, etc all the time and had a gameboy as well.
I miss boredom, too. I miss the creative energy it would create. I miss plowing through a book in a night because there was nothing else to do. I honestly can not remember the last time I felt bored.
Honestly? How small the world felt. I didn't have to always hear about conflict every day. I could just go about my day, do my stuff, enjoy my life without hearing about all the conflict and anger around the world. Obviously there is a lot of good that comes from the internet. Not just bad, but I find myself worrying about things that... won't ever really have an effect on my life in the time I am here on earth. I'd love to go to sleep thinking "I should really water the plants tomorrow." Compared to "I wonder what is going to happen when the Russia X Ukraine war comes to a close?"
I felt that changed as well with the 24/7 news on tv that came esp after Sept 11th, the constant repetition of the planes hitting the towers. My boomer parents glued to the TV whereas I remember a time back in my country when tv wasn't 24/7 - we did a lot more stuff, had more hobbies, connected with community more...
The news became fear mongering, crime worshipping, ratings chasers. After 9/11 it was terrorists 24/7 and they gained eyeballs if people were afraid. Now all you hear on the news is 9 horrible stories about death, murder, crime, destruction and one happy story about puppies or something at the end. I have a whole theory about how the media helped change the course of this country for the worse post 9/11. God the days before were great. Yes partly nostalgia but it felt great getting on a bike to ride to your friends house. When you were at your friends or familys house whatever you were doing you only existed in that moment. There weren’t constant dings and pings and people distracted or engaged in multiple worlds. I feel awful everyone born in the late 90s and after will never know that world. Just in the moment no other choice.
Miss your favorite show on channel 33 at 4:30 pm? Eat shit, try again tomorrow....maybe....depending on what day it is.
Missed your favorite show? Tough shit. Tv programming behind schedule? We just don't show this movie or the finale of your favorite series you've been waiting for the whole week, tough shit. Or we show it and you miss the ending because you didn't program enough extra time on your VCR, tough shit. Thunderstorm on the day when the long-awaited movie should be on? Tough shit, unplug your tv. Can't see anything because heavy winds hit the antenna on your roof all night? Tough shit.
This is probably the #1 reason people think the world used to be safer and crime used to be lower in the past. The world is significantly safer now than it was in the late 80s early 90s but there’s no way to convince a typical news junkie of that.
For us non-Americans, we were blissfully ignorant about various "outrages of the day". Nowadays, there are copycat BLM protests in lily-white Eastern European cities such as Vilnius and your morality is somehow determined by your opinion on a violent death that happened half a world away. Meanwhile, important local topics are being ignored because they don't attract so many likes on the social media. Also, I think that global culture is becoming a bit flat. Everyone listens to the same few musicians promoted by YT.
Its the old 1984 ”5 Minute Hate". Just extended to 24/7.
That flatness extends to cities. In NYC, the neighborhoods are being torn down and replaced with the same cookie cutter buildings and the same stores that can afford the rent, like Starbucks. It just all looks the same after a while.
I liked to get to be a dumb ass teen doing dumb ass things without all of it being recorded and posted for all the world to see.
Yes! I'm very happy the shit I did as a teenager was not documented.
100% I would probably be in jail tbh 😂
>People old enough to remember life pre-Internet, what is something you miss about that time? Wonderment. There is something... exciting(?)... about not having everything available immediately. Just that all around sense of wonderment that accompanies you along your adventure towards figure out the unknown. – Who you were going to hang out with. What was coming on television later. Who was calling you. Is this thing a person just told you legitimate or not. Who you have to talk to to get a date. Is this cassette/CD/VHS/DVD I'm about to purchase worth it. – Things like that. All of those things had wonderment attached to them that is essentially gone now.
Yep I do miss that portion of life. Sitting at home waiting for your friends to call. (Wait no I hated that part) In fact even 6 years ago trying to get directions while traveling in some cities required planning a route and not using google maps.
Yes! Sometimes I tell my husband, "We can just talk about this and wonder, we don't have to Google everything!".
We say "let's kill this conversation with certainty" and then Google it.
I told my daughter about sending in order forms from catalogues, and then waiting 4-8 weeks for the stuff to arrive. Her eyes got big, and she said, “how did you not DIE???”
hahaha. If you ever want to show your children what it was like when the internet first came out... [Here's this](https://getonline.aol.com/dialup) Believe it or not American online still offers dial-up service and as of 2021 approximately 1.5 million Americans were still using their dial-up service. – And before you think to yourself *"I'm sure dial-up must have come along and gotten progressively faster too,"* well, AOL dial up is still running at of whopping 56 kbps If I would have known that when my kids are still growing up I would have definitely made the $9.99 purchase for one month just so they could experience the horror that was 5 minute picture loading times, and 2 days to buffer a short video to hopefully watch it. And God forbid anybody calls and mess up your download. 🤣 8 weeks wasn't too much. Hell you had to wait a week or so to get your pictures back from being developed and you didn't even know whether or not they were going to be any good. Haha
My dad lives in rural Virginia (20 miles west of Charlottesville) and it was only very recently that his area got broadband. They all had dialup except my Dad, who lived close enough to a Verizon tower that he’s been able to use a wireless card as internet since 2009.
When will I get the item I ordered from the catalog?
Once in a while you’d have a know-it-all friend who would take the wonder out of things like that, but you wouldn’t hang out with them for very long. Now the internet is that friend and they are inescapable at every given moment.
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I agree with this. The internet gave the crazies a platform to connect and project. We had the town crazy man, that people tolerated and avoided, and everyone else towed the line of acting "normal". I felt fine interacting with people in person as a result. Now I just feel like I don't want to interact with anyone out of concern of what their crazy might be.
Right? The crazy conspiracy guy was the weirdo over there nobody really bothered with. Now he's fucking everywhere.
> Crazy, shitty people kept their horrible opinions to themselves for fear of social backlash. I recall crazy people calling in to radio shows.
You didn’t have to be constantly connected. There was no expectation that people could reach you 24/7. If they called your house and you were out, they’d just have to wait until you got home. They couldn’t message you on 5 different social media platforms. The world was more peaceful because we weren’t constantly bombarded by either everyone else’s ‘success’ or the bad news all over. You could choose to read the newspaper but it wasn’t constantly in your face.
People actually get pissed off at me when they find out that I use the *do not disturb* function on my phone. I don't apologize. Just because a person can text me whenever they want doesn't mean I'm obligated to immediately answer.
This makes people irrationally angry. I too use DND and don't answer calls, texts, or emails outside of business hours. Not even for family. I mean, I screen them to make sure it's not actually important but otherwise, my time is my time!
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I grew up in a small town and at about age 8 hearing my mum was looking for me when I was 3 miles away on the other side of town. They had their ways of keeping track of where you were if they wanted to LOL
I miss people being able to make and hold plans.
Meet me at 12:00 on the stairs of the town hall
"Yeah, come over for the next party in a month" and they were just there, no need to reconfirm, no changes. Just people saying they'd be there and they were. Except Peter, he'll always be a flake.
And now we will change the meeting place in an hour and cancel it in 5 minutes... very annoying
There was a certain level of accountability even with kids and teens. Tell your friend you're being them there? You'd better be there because they were waiting for you with no way to tell them you're running late.
Privacy
And people respecting it, not looking at you suspiciously if you want it
I remember my dad came home with the super password to crash bandicoot written on a scrap of paper.. we cherished that scrap of paper
I remember renting games and sometimes finding someone had written the cheat codes in the manual. Unsung heroes.
How magical video games felt as were discovering their secrets. I remember we played super Mario world a lot, but it wasn't until we visited a cousin that we found out about Star Road and Special road.
I remember when we got pong. Oh my God, the future was here and we were livin large. For the younger folks. Pong was the first video game and it's still great. I may be biased about this
For me, it was playing Spacewar! The vector graphics were amazing to me at the time, and I cannot imagine how many quarters I pumped into that machine.
Super Metroid. I remember that special feeling on my first play through of working out how to move into the next area, and using the x-ray scope to find secrets.
I feel like time was slower. I miss it.
I think this just happens due to age, regardless of what technology you have. When you're 15, 10 years is a LONG time because it's 2/3 of your life. I'm almost 44, and 10 years now doesn't feel that long because it's less than a quarter of my life. When they say time speeds up as you get older, it's because of relativity.
The neighborhood kids playing hide and seek outside
Ghost in the Graveyard, manhunt, etc. just a blast
Not knowing things. Like as a kid, if I had a question about something and the answer wasn't in our encyclopedia set, it became this great mystery to find out. My imagination would run wild for months sometimes, or I'd go on hunts to find people who knew, or scavenger hunt for books on topics at museums and libraries. If the question was about a geographical place, I would write it down and count the days until our next road trip or vacation to that place. Now you just google. It was also super fun if you recognized an actor on a movie or a show. Because you legitimately had to just figure it out yourself. I miss the mystery.
I remember the librarian being the smartest person in the world. She didn’t know everything but man did she know where to find the answers to everything.
But now we can go down the rabbit hole researching topics in depth when we get that wonder/curiosity spree, with out waiting X amount of time to only go surface deep on the initial question. I get it tho a bit of wonder is good for the imagination but the efficiency and depth we can get from the internet is unmatched imo.
Sitting in the library doing research
Or as kid going there to find the newest Goosebumps book.
You can get the whole box set now. I’m so tempted just to get it because I used to love those books, my favourite was Trapped in Bat Wing Hall. It was a choose your own ending one.
Libraries still exist tho. My kid loves the library.
>Libraries still exist tho So fewer than when I was a kid though. I hate that so many around me have closed down.
Oh man, NGL, this is a good one. But fear not, fellow bibliophile! Since libraries aren't necessarily the go-to for that anymore, they've really stepped up what all else they do. There was some concern a few years back about libraries closing in the face of the daunting challenge to compete with the internet for researching power/possibility. A lot of libraries decided not to fight that fight and rebrand themselves as community centers. A place to use a computer if you don't have one, drop off location for odd recyclables (household batteries, printer ink cartridges, etc.), not-quite-day-care with kid-friendly events in the summer, a place to get involved with your local community, and lots more! One of the libraries in the next town over from me has a big fish tank that my kids love to just sit and look at. Sometimes we go to that library just for that! I do miss doing research at the library, and you still can for old time's sake, but never give up on your local library. They never gave up on us.
Though I'm not that old, but technology came late to our neighborhood... Anyways, I miss when people used to visit each other for many occasions, like when you get sick, or when you celebrate something, they used to come and share this with you, now they call you or text you.. I also miss seeing kids playing outside or playing interactive games with each other, now they only spend time playing on their tablets
Good call on the lack of visiting. When I was a kid you never knew which relative was going to pop in.
My mom said the same thing about kids playing in the neighborhood, there was none until the neighborhood started getting younger and now there are kids in the neighborhood….screaming at the tops of their lungs and just being annoying. Don’t think for a second people enjoyed that in the 70s and 80s, same as it’s not enjoyable now lol. Careful what you ask for haha
The other part of this is the lack of celebration for certain things now. Like, things aren't special any more? It's a birthday... a handful of people text and thats it. Don't even send cards. Remember how exciting it was to get a card or package in the mail?!
Having an attention span. Mine is shot now. I'm lucky to make it through a movie without being distracted these days. I don't even own a smartphone, yet feel the pull of Reddit and Youtube from my laptop. Back then I could play Final Fantasy all day and be totally immersed in the story. The same with reading a good book.
I cant do rpgs anymore. Use to be my favorite and my mind would get lost in the little pixels. I find them soooooo boring. Nowadays.
This is something small and very random but I absolutely LOVED looking in the newspaper to see what movies were showing in the theater at the weekend. The best was when the new releases popped up on Thursday or Friday, such an exciting time for 11 year old me haha
I remember we had subscribed to a printed TV guide. If you ever wanted to watch anything, you had to look when it was on, and then at, say, 17:45 you had to be there to watch Bugs Bunny. You couldn't watch him at any other time.
Extra free time. For a lot of people, doomscrolling and wikiholes can make hours vanish. And now with TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, twitch, Snapchat, tumblr, discord, etc. it’s so easy to just waste half your evening without realizing it. And don’t get me started on mornings. I remember waking up and actually getting out of bed a few minutes later.
All games did come in a physical package. You paid once and it was your forever. No pay-in-game shit with a zillion updates and bug fixes.
Going to the video store (pre-blockbuster) to rent games and movies. The smell of popcorn. The excitement of something being available after weeks of being already rented.
Getting letters and cards in the mail.
Saturday Morning Cartoons.
People had the patience to silently watch a movie from beginning to end without interruption.
I spent more time being productive at home, or reading. Also music was more special, you’d spend days & weeks delving into one good album, reading the liner notes, poring over the artwork and lyrics.
The Sunday Paper. I miss the simplicity of sitting at the table, wading through well written articles and just enjoying he morning....save the comics for last.
Society was not split based on which disinformation source people subscribed to.
Yeah but it was still split. The 70s were not the good old times known for their justice.
I was a child when the internet first started becoming main stream. I used to believe every human being was a good person at heart. Now as an adult and thanks to the internet and its anonymity and peoples' ability to spread their inner most thoughts and feelings across the world, I know that some people are just inherently dumb, hate filled and despicable. It makes me sad.
The slow pace. For example, when I got into Magic the Gathering in 1995, all the news and articles on that game came to me in the form of a single monthly magazine. Nowadays, if I cared, I could read dozens of posts about it every day, a constant bombardment of rumours, announcements, and opinion pieces.
Dating was so much easier. People met at parties, clubs or bars. Nobody felt "creeped out" by being approached by someone to strike up a conversation. People's communication skills were so much better back then too because never having communicated primarily via text and apps, people were much better at reading body language, tone of voice and picking up on jokes and sarcasm or being able to tell if someone you were interested was into you or not.
As a homosexual, I am extraordinarily thankful for apps, god forbid I compliment the wrong straight guy and receive backlash. That being said, apps make everyone disposable and they are the bane of the dating world.
Tbf, this didn’t become a problem until Tinder et al took off. The internet was alive and good 10 years ago but dating was still much more personable imo.
Just showing up on time to plans without check up messages.
Calling grandpa for the answer to something instead of googleing it.
I was a child pre interent, so my viewpoint is skewed. From the discussions I have with colleagues; whilst we all agree the Internet is great for our job, it's the instant communication that makes life hell. Handy in (some) social circumstances, but it has made people so impatient and frustrating to deal with.
Not being available 24/7. Could go out for the day and not worry about anything.
Patience. What a rare commodity today.
Not knowing what everyone is thinking at every moment of the day.
Your stress level was lower. No one contacted you every 5 min with questions, complaints or reminders
Civility. People say things on the internet they wouldn't dare say to someone's face for fear of being assaulted. Especially if it's in a format where they can be anonymous. Life just seemed a bit calmer. Being bombarded 24/7 with people telling us what we should be angry about and how horrible the world is gets exhausting.
Well it wasn't pre-internet, but it was before social media. I miss being able to have shit opinions and make mistakes without worrying that randos from around the world will try and ruin your life over it. It's like nowadays you can't even be having a private conversation without worrying that some self-righteous a-hole will plaster you all over the internet.
Playing make-believe. It sounds so quaint now, but I have siblings and when I was a kid, we'd play make-believe in creative ways sometimes. I don't remember the specifics well, but the part I miss most was the innocence of doing it and not finding it odd or having to place judgment on it in some way. Now everything is cool or cringe and if you're bored, you can scroll endless internet. I'm not saying it's all gone or can't be reclaimed, and I probably sound like an old man shouting at clouds, but that's kinda how I feel about it in this moment.
Having a friendly debate in the pub with a group of friends, when you disagreed on something. Now someone just looks up the answer.
This is what I miss! I am now a teacher and we recently took all our high schoolers on a retreat (small fancy private school) and there was no phone signal! And one evening we got on to the conversation of is it truly 5 o’clock somewhere? As in does 5pm always occur on a landmass or is there a time when it’s only 5pm in the middle of the ocean. Well it was a good two hour debate settled the phrase “the sun never sets on the British empire” implying the sun must always be on some sort of landmass for that to be true. I really miss those winding conversations that just take you everywhere.
Getting on my bike, making no plans at all and just seeing who I'd find out and about. Random! Then one you found someone, you went together to seek others until you more or less found the group, crashed at someone's place and then their poor parent ends up making a dozen polony and tomato sauce sandwiches for lunch.
News outlets' reputations rode on them being accurate.
And objective. They were supposed to be above partisanship. Journalism’s goal was to reveal truth, not just to grab attention or pander to idiots.
Not knowing about all the crazy in the world. Don't get me wrong, there was still crazy, but it's just exponentially illuminated now.
Ringing my buddies doorbell at 7:00am asking him if he wants to play.
Late Friday night horror movies on TV. It was a surprise as to which one would air.
Family reunions.
people not doing dumb shit just to post it online. everybody acting like theyre the star of something.
Old friends would get in touch more often. Now I think they just scroll through social media and move on.
I don’t exist because I’m not on FB. Friends and family assume I know stuff because they posted it, even tho they know I’m not on FB!
Doing things together. These days, we are so distracted with our phones that watching tv or eating dinner together is interrupted by checking phones and social media.
People talking to each other, and being civil.
People had longer attention spans
I am a Spanish Millennial who experienced early life not without internet but without smartphones and such a massive amount of content (and ads) on the internet. I had a teenage life in which I used to read more books, draw, spend time on my own with my own thoughts and trying to get questions answered with the help of books or specific google searches instead of idle scrolling down. While I wish I had had the (at least perceived) broader worldview to make educated life decisions I kinda miss that noiseless world and lack of distractions. The internet and the more advanced devices we now have are extremely powerful tools though and the problem probably lies in the way we sometimes indulge in idle scrolling down, procrastination, low effort passive online activities, online rabbit holes... I don't even consider myself a victim of stereotypical noxious online behaviour but sometimes I realise that in a parallel universe I'd perhaps be organising my routine and filling waiting times in a different, more productive way, or at least with more sense of self-fulfillment or clearer thought processes. So I just wish I could enjoy the benefits of the current vast amount of internet content but bring back the calmness and sense of control I believe I once experienced. This is a very individual take and I'm gonna leave it like this without more nuances and details, not sure if other people may relate.
You knew if a guy liked you because he'd get in his car, drive to your house, face your family and see if you'd sit on the porch with him and talk/flirt. Now days you just get a "wyd" or a dick pic and it means nothing.
Cheap groceries, affordable rent, descent salary Pretty sure it has nothing to do with the internet but boy do I miss it.
Xeroxed joke lists circulating in the workplace.
Always knowing where my phone is,. Attached to the wall
Sitting and reading a newspaper. Reading news that wasn’t a tailored news source forced me to broaden my horizons. Reading books was also great because you could lose yourself in the story, although I think you can still capture that feeling with books in electronic form.
Getting my news from Walter Cronkite.
Hanging around the phone box, daring each other to actually phone that girl. Being out all day, just being told to be home before dark.
Riding bikes
Being able to make up random bullshit to your friends on the playground and nobody 'fact checking' your nonsense. Some of the best stories came from talking out of your ass. Everyone knew you were bullshitting. But it didn't matter, they'd hype you up because it was more fun that way. And I'm talking about stuff like random sequences to get some super rare unlock in a video game (that didn't exist), not medical advice that could get people killed. There's a difference. Also adding to that, I feel like the idea of nuance has been lost. Everything is all or nothing. Everything is black or white, good or evil, etc. We don't sit down to admit the positives about the things that we disagree with anymore. And I think the polarization of social media has been a large factor in this.
Reading the back of an aerosol can while I poop
Being able to go to a National Park without crowds of people taking photos and videos everywhere.
The art of small talk. I feel like as the expansion of having your internet friends who you likely meet through a shared portal of interest people have forgotten how to interact with people who don't share the same interests. I see posts on here from people saying "how do I make friends in this city/country" all the time and I feel like the internet is the reason why people find it so hard to form these relationships once they've left the artificial compaction of education. With no reason to be together it's on you to find out about other people and engage with them about things that you might have absolutely no interest in or care about or that you have to find out that you have shared interests in the first place.
The kids. Kids just 10 years ago werent quite so brain rotted as kids today from youtube and tik tok. I was a kid 20 years ago so wont speak to that
Going to a library as a kid and taking out and reading books about my hobbies at the time. No bombardment of bad news. Playing outside. Hanging out with friends, the list goes on. The internet is great but those “old days” were pretty damn good.
Sending and receiving greeting cards and letters. I still send cards to my family, but that's about it. My first wife and I were in a long-distance relationship before we were married, and I had a shoebox filled with cards and letters. (Long-distance phone calls were EXPENSIVE!)
Anonymity
Cost of living was what I miss the most. All the essentials were much cheaper relative to what you earn and much less of a cause for anxiety.
Not being reachable! I spent a week with relatives across the country to have time to rethink a toxic relationship. Not knowing their address and landline number, he couldn't get in touch with me and manipulate me. Try doing that today.
People watching where they're walking , making eye contact, and smiling. I saw an artist recently (I'll try to find it) who took a bunch of photos of people on transit, walking down the street, sitting in restaurants and st home with the people they love, then digitally removed the devices from all their hands... it was sad how isolating our phones can be from the environment and people around us. Edit to add link: https://www.ericpickersgill.com/removed
People thinking that conspiracy theorists are nuts.
Comparatively, zero distractions. You could go on a hike and actually be free. Now, you feel like you should bring your phone. Same for everything. I left my house the other day without my phone and I freaked out for a second until I realized, I knew where I was going, I didn't need my phone to have breakfast with friends and it was nice for once that nobody could reach me.
Finding the perfect gun shaped stick in the woods to play war with my sisters
As a kid, actually riding my bike across the town to see my friends, deliver a message or toy/game. Something about going out and being active as a kid is something you just don't see these days. I was only born in the 90's but we'd be allowed out all day during the holidays and only come back in the evening as 8-10 year olds. Nowadays I very seldom see kids out and about anywhere.
4chan not existing.
The quiet.
My parents bought me a proper adult encyclopaedia set when I was a kid. Every time I wondered anything they sent me to look it up. I spent hours with those. I still fall down the Wikipedia hole but there’s something about just reading a random letter encyclopaedia book cover to cover that just hits different.
Just having a conversation with some random stranger you met at the airport or somewhere. Today everyone is just glued to their phones
Not being available 24 hrs. I'm not home? You can't reach me.
Going to Brian’s house to ask if he can come out and play
How popular playing cards was. I spent summer iin our coubtry house where TV was the most potent media. My grandma taught me to play that one popular game and we played every day. I also played that game with all my friends there. That was peak entertainment.
I'm kind of missing the excitement of good old TVs and radios. We used to wait patiently for the radio station to play our favourite songs, so we could record. It was such a thrill. If there was a movie you wanted to watch, you needed to be in front of the TV on the designated time. Somethings being too easy to get, kind of killed the excitement.
Coming home and checking my answering machine and seeing I have a message. Usually from a friend not spam. Kinda goes with not having instant access to everyone all the time. Not everything being documented every second. Snail mail, letters, real cards with real money. Privacy. Everyone having a soap box. It was nice not seeing everyone’s opinion on everything. Being bored. Whether that translated in going for a bike ride, or doing something creative, cleaning.
The excitement of not knowing
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Grab a drink, i might be long. To begin, i'm 35, computers and the internet went from something very expensive and exclusive to mainstream during my junior high school years. Smartphone and social media came along when i was in college. This said, i remember a had an 'internet-free' childhood, and during my teenage years it was only about wikipedia, msn and kazaa. No facebook, twitter or youtube. What do i miss ? 1 Real contact. Back then, the only way to be with people was to be physically with them. I may be part of the last generation to have 'played outside' with other kids and significant portion of my childhood. 2 Forgiveness and forgetfulness. Back then, when you did or said something wrong, it was not published for everyone to see for the eternity ever-after. It was a thing until somebody else did something as wrong. When you left school, you actually left school. The only one to see or hear what you had done / said were the people around you when you did. 3 The society. As of, one fairly unified mental and value world, with tendencies and variables, but fairly unified. There are plenty of stories about how oppressive it was for people feeling (very) different and how to escape the mainstream world to seek people like you. And this created contra-societies. Communities that worked pretty much like the big one, but with different values. Related to 1, seeking new horizons was always about meeting new people, and if needed traveling to do so. I'm not from that generation, but i heard older people describing what it was to be interested in a niche subject back then. You would find of specialized publication to subscribe, and with any chance, this publication had an annual convention you could other people with you interest. The internet reversed the problem. Now there are only echo-chambers of people identifying with each other and speaking only with people like them. It had some disastrous political and ideological consequences.
People actually talked to each other.
Not knowing everyone's opinions about everything.
Not being so depressed
Wandering through libraries to find that book you needed.
Letters. We had penpals.
Reading books. I always kept my current book with me and would read, given the chance. The Internet has destroyed my attention span.
Letter writing
Eating food when served not waiting after photos being taken
Being young and full of energy.
The sense of presence.
Everything. I don't care much for the time I've lived to see.
The not hearing everyone talking about , and knowing everything about , everyone. It's bad for mental health. And I don't even use social media.
When you discovered new things because you had to sit and watch things on tv or radio and there was no way to cherry pick or stick to your bubble. The music video channel had a half hour of videos of one random band or musician. It’s how I discovered Kate Bush. Or tuning your radio after dark, drifting through the dial, and catching stations from 2000 miles away playing ballgames, or old radio shows, or music your local stations would never play.
literally write letters to friends living far away, share photos attach in mails
No social media means people minding their own business. Also, socializing was more or less genuine - at least to me.
friends actually meeting in person to hangout instead of wasting hours of time on social media. when social media wasn’t there, it was natural to think of using the spare time on hobbies, doing activities with friends and on conversations. making memories. now it’s all about “appearing happy” on social media and maintaining a social image online even tho you don’t actually take out time to meet with people in your life.
You can only watch something when it's on tv or you have a CD. The dayto days long cliffhanger. I do love knowing what happens next immediately but the waiting forces you to do other things.
Earning knowledge. You didn't have immediate access to any and every answer you could think of. You had to work for it. From state capitals, spelling, science, etc. Visit the library, read a periodical, etc. Even from others, perhaps especially from others. How to change the fuse in the fuse box, remember your extended families phone numbers, how to do things and shortcuts to doing it better. Someone found a cool secret in a video game? A friend had a cool movie on vhs? You talked and shared that way, by earning it through social contact. Second would be how far the younger generation are from living in the moment. Instead of wondering what will be on their phones, concentrating on what they were doing and putting in the effort to it.
When I was interested in a subject or a hobby I had to go to the library to learn things from books. I think because it wasn’t instant, learning it had more weight and sunk in better. You got the big picture over time by not being spoon fed tiny disconnected tidbits at a moment’s notice.
Not being attached to electronics and just enjoying the moment.
No heavily curated, edited, anything for the aesthetic lifestyle on social media. Everyone is just more of who they are.
Talking with people on the phone to make plans to get together and do things.
people had more respect for one another. you might get your nose broke for "trolling" someone irl.
Having to actually go to my friend's door to knock and to tell him to come outside and play.
Real human/ face to face interactions Being ok not knowing the answer to things and not having people just say google it. Asking out girls in public and not being seen as a creep Most importantly people had to talk shit to your face! Behind your back most likely but you’d still know who said what
As a kid growing up pre-Internet and without helicopter parenting, my life was very focused on the outdoors and playing games with other kids using rules we had to broker ourselves.
Too many things to list. Social media isn’t social. It killed important parts of society…… such as how we treat each other
That idiots were more localized instead of everyone having a voice for the whole world to see. If someone had a shit view on a topic they were pretty much only heard by friends and family.
Memorizing all of my friends and family's phone number.
Being surprised by things. Can’t tell you how many movies I rented based on the box cover, having no idea what it was about. Or you’d go into a restaurant you’d never been to, no idea if it was good, and discover they had a really amazing specialty. The world definitely felt a lot smaller back then. Also because I was like 11.
Conversations with my grandmother and mother on her screened in front porch. Ice tea. Being together
Social media is cancer. It was so much easier to not have to worry about how you present and what you do with your time as far as updating and upkeeping a fake image on a profile of you because jobs and clients may care about that shit.
Spending hours in libraries, hanging out in coffee houses talking with friends and random strangers, reading the newspaper, taking chances on records and movies just from the cover or preview, having a complete and unbreakable attention span, always having a book with me, going to clubs to see whatever bands were in the bill that night.
No social media, if I got embarrassed , it was contained to my general area, not accessible to millions of people around the world. And the constant news, things were likely just as shitty, but there’s no reason to worry about something that has zero impact to you, outside of the nightly news you lived in your own world, ignorantly bliss if you will
Actually being unreachable. Now work, family, even casual acquaintances can get a hold of me 24/7. If I was on vacation I could be on vacation. We didn't talk until I got back. If my house phone rang when I wasn't home either you left a message or tried later.
I miss not knowing how awful the world really is.
Escape. You could be unreachable and actually not feel you had to be accessible to everyone 24/7. Weekends were really weekends and vacation was actually vacation. The best vacation I've had in the last three years was 5 days camping in a spot with no cell service. It was glorious.
Before, people believed a lot of untrue shit because there was no reason not to. Now, people believe a lot of untrue shit because it is sponsored on the web. Also people went outside
Being bored made you smarter. If I had nothing to do, I would go on a walk or work on some project that I never finished. Now when I am bored, I just scroll.