being able to walk to your friends house?
Not knowing everything all the time led to more interesting conversations.
On a related note, not having to know literally everything a public person has done before feeling safe to express even the most basic support for their work.
I appreciate the accountability, I don’t want to support bad people, but back in the day it was like “I enjoyed that album” and then you went back to living your life. Lack of information made separating the art from the artist the default and it made enjoying new stuff take so much less effort.
And at least half of this is just the fact that these people had less reach and weren’t able to be on TV all the time. Back then the CEO of Sears may have thought trans people were monsters, but he wouldn’t have been pushing it on the news or Twitter every day/week.
Orson Scott Card - Ender’s Game
DilbertOne thing that was interesting to me about OSC is that he publicly came out in support of gay marriage pretty early. His reasoning wasn’t moral or supportive, though; he just said that it was inevitable and therefore not worth fighting.
That makes it even more bizarre to me that he’s a practicing Mormon.
No disagreement.
Yes, also. More strongly I feel not being able to contact or be contacted, on chronic but varying intervals, gave me a freedom i didn’t grasp by then, free from worries or work dependancies. I feel I was more independent and more relying on myself.
The mobile communication tool has became something else.
I still say I prefer wild conjecture.
I made a friend a few years ago that would whip their phone out during our conversations to answer my questions or theories about the topics we were discussing. Every single time.
IMO a conversation is just that, I enjoy discussing ideas and theories about subjects I’m not 100% familiar with and want to hear your thoughts and theories as well.
To slice through all of that with a ‘let me google that for you’ was very much not the interaction I found enjoyable at all.
Also less self proclaimed experts.
As a self-proclaimed expert of grammar, I can tell you that the word is “fewer”, as self-proclaimed experts are (supposedly) countable.
Not linked directly to the tech, but generally the thing I miss the most was the optimism. In the 90s people were excited for the future. Crime was trending down, the economy was doing well, the government was paying down the debt, the internet was new and full of wonder. In general there was a push for you to be whatever you wanted to be no matter who you were. The beginning of a lot of breaking down and removing stereotypes and gender norms.
Some of this seems to have reversed, most of it ended on 9/11/2001. That attack killed a lot of the optimism and things line the PATRIOT ACT really put us on the dystopian track we find ourselves on now. Also a lot of the economic boom were from the deregulation that would cause massive problems later…
So, yeah generally I miss the optimism we had.
We could go outside unsupervised.
Which is odd, since not only can you call for help, but crime is way down now
But fear mongering is way way up.
Ironically, it’s much safer now because of all the horrifying things that happened to kids when we were young
I think it’s more that the crimes that are committed are just more widely reported.
I don’t even live in the US but every time someone in Florida throws a bagel at an alligator it gets reported internationally.
This is actually the result of specific differences between Florida’s laws around publishing crimes in the news compared to other states. I forget what the right term is and the exact laws, but basically in Florida everything can end up in the news right away while I believe other states limit what can be published before the court rules on a crime below a certain threshold, so the crazy stuff stops being interesting and gets forgotten about long before it could ever get published in other states.
Or something along those lines.
It’s called the sunshine law. All police reports in Florida are a matter of public record that can be obtained by anyone. The press trolls those reports multiple times a day.
We’ve also seen the death of third spaces and a major wave of helicopter parenting that simply could not exist before the way it does today.
My parents were shocked when me and some people around my age were ambivalent about getting our driver’s licenses as teens, because for them it was like the first real bit of “adult freedom” in their lives. But by the mid 2000s, it was a very different world from when they were kids. Malls were dying, 3rd spaces were being monetized or removed, and existing in public for free was already becoming a difficult prospect. The idea of being able to go to a place to hang out had already been dying off when we were kids. What were we going to do, spend our time after school working to spend that money to drive somewhere that we’d then have to spend more money at to just hang out? When we could just sit around and play video games for free? Owning a car largely just meant suddenly having bills to pay and more responsibilities.
And the advent of cell phones (and social media) made it even worse. The prospect of people getting a call at any time from their parents asking where they were and who they were hanging out with was starting to raise its head as an issue. Today it’s even worse with the tracking apps on kids’ phones and devices in their backpacks or cars. I still remember the first and last time I posted something on Facebook. Right when Facebook was first starting to get big, a friend of mine made me a Facebook account. My first and last post was a comment about how 8am classes sucked, which my dad commented on “But they’ll go anyway.” Immediately upon reading that, I wondered to myself why anybody would willingly subject themselves to having their personal thoughts broadcast and judged/criticized like that and never logged in again.
GPS tracking kids like that is child abuse. It’s miserable what kids these days are subject to. No wonder mental health is in the toilet. I’m probably about a decade younger than you, can I can confirm there was nowhere to go.
I assume if you remember that you’re old enough to go outside now unsupervised too.
And yet, cameras everywhere
There were cameras everywhere in the 90s too, though. They’re just a bit smaller now.
It was such a blessing to not have every aspect of your life monetized by shadowy tech billionaires. I see that now. You could simply exist as a person without worry that something or someone would gather the most intimate details of your existence to sell to the highest bidder so they could better psychologically manipulate your purchasing decisions. If you wanted, you could disappear for a while to recharge in solitude - no cellphone cataloging where you are, no cameras generating records of your movements. Friendships were more solid. These were people like you that sought connection whether it was an activity or common experience. There were whole seasons when you were free to roam about and socialize or not, there was no expectation of you being productive every waking moment. It was a time when science and technology felt exciting - the next new discovery or invention would be something that would improve our lives. Computers were simple by todays standards and were centered around what YOU wanted to do with them, not just a conduit to shovel content to consume. It was an exploratory experience and you felt so accomplished when you got the hang of the interface. I can barely recall the feeling of knowing there was a brighter future ahead of you and that there were others in this world who cared and reached for it too.
Fuck, I’m crying as I write this. I’m mourning a world that no longer exists and can’t ever again.
Yours is the root cause of a lot of grievances posted here in response to this question, thank you for so aptly putting to words a thing that is so real yet hard for many to see.
You can’t recharge in solitude anymore?
Damn it.
I knew this thread was gonna make me feel things, and that those things were most likely to be ennui and worse, but did you have to cut right to the bone?
I wanna return to the 70s
Cycling to friend’s place to see if they’re home or spinning around the town checking where the people are hanging out at
It was quite simple and nice not being connected 100% of the time
Taking that further: you had to expend a decent amount of energy with no promise that someone was there or that you didn’t have to go elsewhere.
Not having a camera or tracker up my ass everywhere I went.
Hair metal.
Big concerts with crazy amounts of people and you got a $20 ticket made out of paper that you could save to display in your photo album.
Two sliders in car for heat and air. One for low or fast blowing, one to slide from hot to cold. Why tf do I need a PhD for my AC when I’m trying to drive?
Going outside.
Not having parents and teachers and government bother people constantly about everything. Latch key parents didn’t go to jail for neglect, kids grew up with freedom, gov wasn’t watching you, and police were not at schools.
Playing video games without the need to sign in, use server, update for a goddamn hour when I only have 45 min to play, and games made for fun rather than cookie cutter eye candy.
Kids got in trouble for tobacco but didn’t get criminal charges for it. We also did not get charges for fighting. We got through it. Now parents are in court rooms over stupid normal shit kids do.
People didn’t kill each other at schools. Students often had gun racks in the back windows of their vehicles and nobody cared.
Playing video games without the need to sign in, use server, update for a goddamn hour when I only have 45 min to play, and games made for fun rather than cookie cutter eye candy.
Oh I definitely have to wait before I can play games.
I had to go and buy a bunch of CDs to install World of Warcraft because otherwise it would have taken about 6 years on my dial-up internet connection. Then my father would probably have called, broken the download, and I’d have had to have started all over again.
In this vein, a video game that was finished and playable the instant I installed it.
Granted I had to fiddle around with the Soundblaster settings and then figure out the memory manager, but once that was done the game was playable.
Yeah but when it was all set up, watch out! No delay!
Except when one ram stick crashed out and it was a bit wild. PCs last forever now.
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Big concerts with crazy amounts of people and you got a $20 ticket made out of paper that you could save to display in your photo album.
God yes, affordable concerts that were actually performed live rather than lip-synched. And Ticketmaster had not become the monopolistic scum of the earth they are now. You could actually get really good seats at a reasonable price if you were willing to get on the phone and dial like a monster or wait in line at the box office. Very rarely would anyone overpay. Even scalpers’ prices were reasonable compared to average list prices today.
No cops in school, no school shootings. Parents were not our chauffeurs, either. They might grudgingly drop you off somewhere or pick you up but you could not expect them to do both without a lot of cajoling and pleading or bribing.
Summers from 6th grade on were just incredible. I’d wake up whenever, head out and not come home until dark. If I was going to be later than that, I’d have to call and let the parental units know or there would be hell to pay but other than that I was free to do whatever…but I wasn’t getting any money from the parents to do anything. If I wanted funds for my activities, it was up to me to figure out what kind of work I could do to earn money.
My son is about to be 13, doesnt have his own phone, hardly plays video games, and often doesnt watch Tv instead chooses to play outside.
He finally found a kid in the neighborhood who also isnt screen addicted and its so nice to see them play. Shortly after school hours, you see either my son or the other kid start circling on their bike waiting for the other kid to come out. Then they play outdoors for hours. They come home from their neighborhood adventures sometimes covered in mud, with new scrapes and out of breath from running and playing. I love it! I love to hear them laughing and enjoying their time, I love that they are learning social skills, figuring out who they are, while not comparing themselves to what they see on the internet. It’s fantastic.
Recently a teacher was taken aback when said he didnt have a phone (he uses mine to text friends) and I scoffed a bit inside with pride. My kid has healthy self esteeme and makes friends everywhere he goes. It brings me a lot of joy to see him thrive in this way, hes begining to learn independence and idk, I love it for him.
Being unreachable without it feeling weird—peace was built into the day.
This was such a beautiful thing.
Not needing an account to do everything.
You paid at the door, you enjoyed your bowling/concert/etc, you didn’t get adverts for the rest of your life.
I just don’t like the account nonsense.
If it’s required at a physical business, guess I’m going home.
A lack of cameras everywhere. Plenty of dumb things that happened in my childhood now only live in my memory (and maybe those who were there). There’s no video proof of a dumb thing I said or did. I was free to make mistakes.
The freedom to make mistakes honestly. For real that hurts my heart to think about.
The freedom to make mistakes, the freedom to go out with your friends all day without being contactable, “Be home before dinner time.” The freedom to explore, the freedom to be bored and entertain yourselves. Just so much more freedom to grow and learn without parents or carers forever watching, tracking, monitoring your whereabouts and activities. We got in trouble but learned how to get out of it ourselves.
Oh yeah. This is a good one
Privacy.
I remember when it all first started. They’d say “If you don’t have anything to hide then what’s the problem?” Now look where we’re at, have an emergency, trying to get out of a bad situation, maybe the forest is on fire - sorry your car won’t start until you calm down. Give it another few years and it’ll be much much worse. Anyone who supports this is a complete moron.
And healthy skepticism. People too easily hand over their personal info these days.
The shared experience of Television and Movies.
Nearly everyone watched The Simpsons, for instance. It was more reliable than Game of Thrones ever was.
More truth and fewer media bubbles. The “WMDs in Iraq” lie was a huge understanding, and not everyone believed it, just enough. Now you can do that more easily with some social media accounts and algorithms. People just choose their own news.
I remember when return of the Jedi was broadcast for the first time on public tv, the next day 100% of the kids were playing light sabers at school. It was the original dub so we had some names wrong (Yan solo and for some reason Z6PO) , and being kids in sure most of the plot had gone over our heads but man, those lightsaber battles 🤌
Legit the lack of a monoculture has been one of the worst results of connectivity and has had some terrible knock on effects.
Everything. The world had so much before we started spending our present in phones. I had time for art and hobbies and writing. I did so much exploration and sports and socializing. Road trips, and events, and helping others. Things were memorable.
Now is more like an addiction. The time goes but I’m never sure where it went. I barely have time to sleep, much less any other activities
Things that happened at the party, mostly stayed at the party. Now you can find yourself on TikTok the next morning
