Back when I was your age...

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CommanderKeen
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Back when I was your age...

Postby CommanderKeen » 28 Nov 2009, 10:30

Inspired by a tweet one of my friends made: "I miss those simpler times where the world didn't revolve around brightly coloured screens & instant detached connectiveness."

Apparently sometime ago, the internet didn't exist(shocking I know!). People from all over the world couldn't talk to each other instantly, and couldn't share images, video or other media with the click of a button. How have things changed for the better, how are they worse? Is there a particular aspect of life before the advent of the mainstream internet that you would love to be able to have back? Do you hate having to carry your cellphone everywhere you go and miss having payphones on every block?


Heckle, comment, Discuss.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Anguswaffle » 28 Nov 2009, 11:00

I miss having only 151 pokemon.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby iEatNinjaZ » 28 Nov 2009, 11:03

Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.

This

Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.
This
Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.
THIS
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Lyinginbedmon » 28 Nov 2009, 11:15

Most of my earliest still-legible memories involve AOL and the angry buzzing sound that was the Internet at the time.

For me, between childhood and present day, modern culture has only really gotten better as far as technology goes.

What really bugs me goes way back to the Middle ages, when somehow people were much happier making their own clothing articles, so everyone was way more unique and stylised. This was a theme that continued throughout the Rennaissance, and whilst we've got more resources now we're much happier to imagine worlds where everyone dresses in their own little style than actually make one ourselves.

But that's a topic from another thread...

To summarise: I don't have any complaints with technological progress, though the pokemon population has gotten way out of proportion.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Theremin » 28 Nov 2009, 11:34

I miss sending letters slightly, but waiting for a response was always murder.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Sable » 28 Nov 2009, 12:10

I miss rotary-dial payphones.

And no prefix codes. You could dial your house with four digits.

And they only took a dime.

Yeah, I don't suppose you embryos remember those!
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Evil Jim » 28 Nov 2009, 12:18

I miss having a payphone & public mailbox on every block, & 25¢ postage stamps.

I also miss the era when you could go to school without having to go through a bag-check & metal detector, as well as when you could go through an airport without having to take your frigging shoes off.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Elomin Sha » 28 Nov 2009, 12:33

I miss my online Jedi Academy days and my determination to get things done.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Master Gunner » 28 Nov 2009, 12:35

iEatNinjaZ wrote:
Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.

This

Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.
This
Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.
THIS

THIS


Seriously, back in the day I could name every pokemon and their type, along with their unique attacks. I was a walking fucking pokedex in grade 3. Then they had to come out with all of these new ones and it stopped being worth it. Now they're up to, what, 500? No way.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby empath » 28 Nov 2009, 18:08

I miss not having thousands of electronic ways to fill our every spare moment, so people would actually had times while they waited for something to finish, etc. and would...I dunno...talk to another person. Not fire off some emails, or check their stock quotes, or txt msg their kids about what to have for supper, or blog about the traffic today, or listen to their #13-#32 favourites remixed by iTunes for them, or tweet about the cool person a couple of spots ahead in the line at Starbucks, or...

The A-type "productivity" fascists took over, and they did it by selling us leashes and collars disguised alluringly with flashing gizmos. Today everyone seems desperate fill any idle moment with some form of 'work'. Oh, and often not just ONE action, either. Oh no -

THOU SHALT MULTITASK.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Evil Jim » 28 Nov 2009, 18:11

Go read a book.
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Arius wrote:People were just so awestruck by your awesomeness that they became catatonic.
ThrashJazzAssassin wrote:BURN HIM! BURN THE HERETIC! DEATH TO ALL WHO SCORN THE AWESOMENESS OF EVIL JIM!
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby theDreamer » 28 Nov 2009, 18:17

...I think the scary part is I actually can't remember my life before youtube or wikipedia.

I do remember when I got my first jump drive though. My dad took every floppy disk we had in the house (we had a lot), stacked them, and said that wasn't even 1/4 of the amount of storage on my one little jump drive.

...I think that was the day I decided I wanted to work with computers...I was 11...and LRR was just starting, unbeknown to me.

Wait, what was this thread about again?



I think I miss anonymity. That doesn't really exist in the modern world. If someone tried, I wouldn't be surprised if, from this forum post, they could have my name, address, and porn history, without asking me (I might share), within an hour.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Father Time » 28 Nov 2009, 18:26

I remember when I was a kid I always thought the future (as in a couple decades) would be very similar to back then, and that there wouldn't be any more ultra revolutionary Earth shattering inventions, like the car, the telephone, the light bulb, the printing press, or the computer.

Then the internet became big, and mainstream.

So yeah I was proven to be dead wrong and now I get a warm fuzzy feeling whenever I see technology pushing forward as if we're entering the future.

Go internet.

On the downside it's a major time sink in a way that TV could not hope to be.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Father Time » 28 Nov 2009, 18:27

iEatNinjaZ wrote:
Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.

This

Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.
This
Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.
THIS


I remember early on in the internet I found so many fake codes tips and tricks for pokemon red and blue.

Especially involving that damn truck.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby empath » 28 Nov 2009, 18:39

Evil Jim wrote:Go read a book.


Are you giving me a suggestion to fill my free time with more 'productive behaviour'? :P


No, books don't work anymore either: "Just a sec, lemme go grab my Kindle™ - I just downloaded the most AWESOME story the other day from Amazon; by this indie author you'll never have heard of; writes such a <insert preference of fiction>"

Again, you missed my point. True, I did a poor job in sandwiching it between grumbling jabs at today's technological society, but I did italicize it...




...so, seriously. How are you today? Really?
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Ottoman » 28 Nov 2009, 18:42

Anguswaffle wrote:I miss having only 151 pokemon.

MissingNo was the best. The best.

I remember when having a dial-up connection was acceptable. And that lovely modem sound. . .

beeeeep bululululul kshkhhhhhk. . . . bee-ong bee-ong beep. . . kshkhhhhh. . .
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Father Time » 28 Nov 2009, 19:01

empath wrote:I miss not having thousands of electronic ways to fill our every spare moment, so people would actually had times while they waited for something to finish, etc. and would...I dunno...talk to another person. Not fire off some emails, or check their stock quotes, or txt msg their kids about what to have for supper, or blog about the traffic today, or listen to their #13-#32 favourites remixed by iTunes for them, or tweet about the cool person a couple of spots ahead in the line at Starbucks, or...

The A-type "productivity" fascists took over, and they did it by selling us leashes and collars disguised alluringly with flashing gizmos. Today everyone seems desperate fill any idle moment with some form of 'work'. Oh, and often not just ONE action, either. Oh no -

THOU SHALT MULTITASK.


You know just for the sake of irony I hope for some reason you have to spend a lot of time with an Amish person that has narcolepsy.

Nothing personal though.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby epocalypse » 28 Nov 2009, 19:05

you see, personally, i just miss a time before a freaking sparkly vampire half nude werewolf movie had the best opening weekend.

we were all so young and innocent back then, sigh.

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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Arius » 28 Nov 2009, 19:07

Ernest Cline wrote:When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up. What, with walking 25 miles to school every morning, uphill both ways, through year-round blizzards, carrying their younger siblings on their back, to their one room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average despite their full-time after school job at the local textile mill where they worked for 0.35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death. And I remember promising myself that, when I grew up, there was no way in hell that I was gonna lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it.

But, now that I've reached the ripe old age of 29, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today, you've got it so fucking easy. I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a god damn utopia. And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it.

I mean, when I was a kid, we didn't have 'the internet.' If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the god damn library and look it up ourselves. And there was no 'e-mail' you had to actually write someone a letter with a pen, then you had to walk all the way across the street to put it in a fucking mailbox, and it would take like, a week, to get there. And there were no 'MP3s' or 'Napster,' if you wanted to steal music, you had to go to the god damn record store and shoplift it yourself, or you had to wait around all day to hear it pop up on the radio, but the DJ would usually talk at the beginning and fuck it all up.

You wanna hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn, you had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of Hustler from the 7-11. It was either that, or jack off to the lingerie section of the J.C. Penny catalogue. Those were your options.

And we didn't have fancy shit like 'call waiting,' if you were on the phone and someone else called, they got a busy signal. And we didn't have fancy 'caller ID' boxes either, when the phone rang you had no idea who it was. It could be your boss, your mom, a collections agent, your drug dealer, you didn't know. You just had to pick it up and take your chances mister.

We didn't have any fancy 'Sony Playstation' video games with high resolution 3D graphics. We had the Atari 2600, with games like Space Invaders and Asteroids. And the graphics sucked ass, your guy was a little square, you had to use your imagination. And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever. And you could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you die, just like life. It built character resetting, Jim.

And when we went to the movies, there was no such thing as stadium seating. All the seats were the same height, if the tall guy sat in front of you, you were fucked. And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was like only 20 channels. And there was no 'on screen' menu, you had to use a little book called the TV Guide to find out what was on. And there was no 'Cartoon Network,' you could only get cartoons on Saturday morning.

Do you understand what the fuck I'm saying and what it all means, you spoiled little bastards? I know exactly what I'm talking about. You kids today have got it too easy, you're spoiled. And I swear to god, you guys wouldn't last five minutes back in 1987.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Father Time » 28 Nov 2009, 19:09

epocalypse wrote:you see, personally, i just miss a time before a freaking sparkly vampire half nude werewolf movie had the best opening weekend.

we were all so young and innocent back then, sigh.


What you mean back in the days where Titanic had the highest box office draw of any movie ever?
Last edited by Father Time on 28 Nov 2009, 19:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby badgersprite » 28 Nov 2009, 19:10

I miss 80's and early 90's cartoons, back when everything was about giant robots and magical rings that summon superheroes, rather than cheap one-liners and annoying sounds.

I miss how camp and fun TV used to be; I miss action TV shows about two Greeks fighting monsters and Olympian Gods, filmed in New Zealand, and I miss benevolent billionaires hiring three hot women to fight crime.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby TomBrend » 28 Nov 2009, 19:18

I miss when you could use a paperclip to make free calls on payphones.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Father Time » 28 Nov 2009, 19:24

Arius wrote:
Ernest Cline wrote:And I swear to god, you guys wouldn't last five minutes back in 1987.


Bullshit!

You act like it was the great freaking depression (try living then). It's easier to entertain ourselves nowadays but do you really think we couldn't entertain ourselves without them? As far as I'm concerned any era where you got air conditioning and heat as a standard it's not that freaking bad.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Arius » 28 Nov 2009, 19:44

Woah, calm down there, Skippy.
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Re: Back when I was your age...

Postby Alja-Markir » 28 Nov 2009, 21:00

The past sucks.

That said, the future isn't sunshine and daisies. Singularists, Utopists, and most other Futurists can go soak their heads. The future has looming problems, and the fact that many people are convinced that science will save them is only compounding such troubles.

The Internet, I admit, is an interesting structure. Hopefully, it is allowing the young generations of the world to grow up with less traditionally closed-minded worldviews, and will help foster a cooperative global community. The problem is, these things are hard to measure, even after the fact.

~Alja~

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