This is eerily similar to videos forwarded on WhatsApp about "things you'd only understand if you were born in the " :)
I did relate to it though. It would be apt for a video about things you'd only understand if you're a millennial.
Life before smartphones (2020)
21–30 of 495 posts
Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#22A couple of things not mentioned: * Half of the population watching the same episodes of the same programme simultaneously. If you missed an episode, it was gone forever * Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be instantly googled.
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Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can always go back, any time! Get a dumb phone. It's great. Engage with others more authentically, more meaningfully, and more consistently.
Tried it, hated it. Everyone is using WhatsApp, Telegram, whatever. Try typing a sms with those tiny buttons, it sucks. There is a reason why some people have a smartphone but not a computer.
That last sentence is the most confusing thing I’ve read today, and I still don’t know what you mean by it.
Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#24I've been working my way through Seinfeld, and I realized most of the plot lines couldn't have happened if cell phones were commonplace back then.
There's a modern Seinfeld twitter account, which has a bunch of zany plot lines that are only possible in the smart phone era.
Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#25I have never truly known a period of time without a smart device. The last watch I had was when I was a small child and it was only a few years ago I found a street "atlas". I have a feeling that I've missed a building block of the digital age by not experiencing an evolutionary phase.
Aligning the infrared ports of two phones until max speed was achieved and being extremely careful to not move them for minutes which felt like ages to just send over a polyphonic ringtone..
And if the bell rung, well, you were out of luck
Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#26Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#27A couple of things not mentioned: * Half of the population watching the same episodes of the same programme simultaneously. If you missed an episode, it was gone forever * Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be instantly googled.
> * Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be instantly googled.
I don't miss those. Before the Internet, if it wasn't on an encyclopedia and you weren't at the library, you had no way of corroborating information.
On the other hand, since facts are so accessible right now, those arguments have shifted to voicing their feelings and wishes because those can't be falsified.
Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#28> Were those the good old days?
I've heard this from several generations that the time when you were still under the protection of parents, but not their attention are the "good old days" of your life - like if your biggest worry if you flipped a car was "My dad will kill me!" and not "phew, not a scratch on me & my friends are all alive".
Must be the youth and opportunity of that phase of life rather than the actual era in the world (just look at a "2007 was the best year in video games" for an equivalent for a late millenial).
The music was better, the cereal crunched better, all your friends lived nearby & were always free to hang out, the TV shows were made for your eyes and talking about your dreams was the thing you did without any irony.
Also there was a lot that affected you that you just didn't know yet. You weren't even aware of your ignorance & all knowledge was just within reach.
> I didn’t think about wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering, or the intricacies of romantic encounters.
> Things weren’t fluid and there was no spectrum. I assumed the police were telling the truth. I was unaware of how frequently powerful men answered the door wearing nothing but a towel.
Oh, there was definitely a spectrum (Rain Man came out in the 80s). Rodney King was before the iPhone. LBJ was already showing people how everything in Texas was bigger (Doris Kearns Goodwin has a laugh about it, but we'll never know if she cringed).
I'm too young to remember all this, because it was before my time, but I sort of went into the part 2 of "We didn't start the fire" here.
Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#29I have never truly known a period of time without a smart device. The last watch I had was when I was a small child and it was only a few years ago I found a street "atlas". I have a feeling that I've missed a building block of the digital age by not experiencing an evolutionary phase.
You can always go back, any time! Get a dumb phone. It's great. Engage with others more authentically, more meaningfully, and more consistently.
You can't go back though, not really. Like if you got lost pre-smartphones you would find a gas station and the person there would rattle off a series of turns you had to memorize on the spot or would pull out an atlas and walk you through directions - this was normal. Now, they would look at you like an alien.
There was a culture of nudging people along to the right place. Even as a kid you would be asked for directions from time to time and have to sort out how many blocks to go before the next turn and all that, often without ever having seen an actual map of your own town.
Re: Life before smartphones (2020)
#30A couple of stand-out memories from the olden days (and I don't consider myself particularly old): Getting a call in a restaurant. Only happened to me once but I certainly felt like a VIP. Carrying a tiny map book of London around with me while cycling around. Missing turn after turn until finding there was a canal which basically took me from the center to my uncle's house. Arranging to meet a friend and then being…
Yeah I remember waiting for people - I got a smartphone at 16, in 2004, something like that, so it's hard to really imagine how it was for adults... My parents told me they spend evenings at the phone booth talking to each other - but even that is ultra convenient compared to my grandparents sending letters :D But I think it's better anyway - we sample mating candidates more, we cycle through faster, we can stop and…
> My parents told me they spend evenings at the phone booth talking to each other - but even that is ultra convenient compared to my grandparents sending letters :D
No need to get to the grandparents' generation, I was the letter writer of my family :) I wrote letters to uncles/aunts/grandpa - mostly at the command of my mum or grandma and sometimes for myself. I remember rushing to the window when the postman yelled and dropped letters through the grill - sometimes there would be more than one! The excitement was palpable - now we sigh with annoyance at the barrage of nonsense and spam that flows into our inbox. Truly a case of quantity over quality.