I was thinking about how much the world has changed since I was a kid. I kind of miss the days when you actually had to wait to see someone to tell them a story, or when getting a CD was a huge event. What’s something ‘old school’ you wish hadn’t disappeared?
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Logging off.
The internet used to be a place. You kept it in one room of your house, or one classroom at school. And this was mirrored by each site being its own fiefdom, mostly owned and operated by A Guy, and if you didn’t like one site’s rules or content then you just went somewhere else.
Now there’s like four sites that matter, and all of them allow an angry mob to endlessly harass you if the wrong nutjob speaks your name, and your seven-inch pocket watch will buzz with each notification that someone told you to gargle thumbtacks.
I’ve turned off notifications for everything except email, sms and calendar, and it’s on do not disturb from 9pm to 6am. You especially don’t want that shit on for social media sites.
This is why I’ve either deleted my account or stopped interacting with strangers on the big tech platforms. Lemmy is pretty much the only place I actively talk with strangers, since it’s the only place that doesn’t have massive ulterior motives and algorithmic promotion of toxicity.
I keep my phone nearby in the evenings, but I really only check on it every once in a while or if I get called. I’ll still be plugged in to whatever I’m doing on my computer, but I can more or less “log off” in the evenings. I miss being entirely unreachable sometimes like I was back in the early 2010s.
Being unavailable. As in, being reasonably sure people won’t repeatedly contact me, as if they expected me to be checking my phone 24/7.
I would say what I miss most is going to rent a movie with my parents on Fridays and Saturdays.
It really was a great way to be together as a family on the weekend.
I regret that I won’t be able to share that with my own children.
Not having answers to any question available immediately. There’s a lot of good in having to think about a problem and reason your way to a possible answer. AI is making the brain drain even worse, and I genuinely worry that people are going to effectively lose the ability to critically think about issues.
Being a child.
Same here. I feel like as a kid, I could just sit and draw for hours without a single notification or distraction. Everything felt so much more focused back then, life was definitely a lot simpler when our biggest worry was what was for lunch or playing outside until the streetlights came on.
On a very long call, you’d eventually get so bothered by a little kink in the telephone cord twisting the wrong way that you’d spend the rest of the call untwisting it and retwisting it in the correct direction, and it was so soothing when you eventually accomplished it.
Buying a fresh map for use on a roadtrip and physically drawing the planned route on top of it with all the stops and notes, then hanging it up like a poster afterwards with all the photos from the trip.
Going to the record store and asking the clerk if they had anything new that was good, then heading into the listening booth to check it out.
Rushing home to check if any long-distance friends were online, on IRC or the bulletin boards. Greater asynchrony in communication, in general.
Just hopping on the bike and riding wherever we felt like for however long with no expectation of checking in or being able to be reached or recalled.
I kind of miss the days when you actually had to wait to see someone to tell them a story
I specifically don’t tell stories much via text or social media for that very reason. I find it much more interesting to tell the story in person. And sometimes I don’t tell the story - not a big deal, either.
I miss that I used to read as my main source of entertainment. I could easily still do it but a combinations of all the options along with my eyes being worse in old age makes it non existent.
I totally get the eye strain struggle! It’s crazy how much more taxing screens are compared to paper. It’s a shame because nothing beats the smell and feel of a real book. I hope you’re still able to find some stories you enjoy, even if it’s in shorter bursts!
Sorry im really talking pre massive content on internet. I don’t use a smarphone and interact with a laptop setup that keeps the screen distance workable with my glasses. To read a book I have to keep it at this very specific distance to work while holding it or I have to take off my glasses and have it way up next to my face.
