A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
Top 40 Radio. It was the default in most stores and restaurants.
You didn't have to go hunting for music, music came to you.
People in small towns were hearing Motown and people in the city were hearing Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.
These days, most of the places I go into have a 1980s station on.
Also, variety TV shows.
Top 40 Radio. It was the default in most stores and restaurants.
You didn’t have to go hunting for music, music came to you.
that was one of the most awful parts of this era, and it continues to this fucking day.
Hide and go seek tag with all the kids in the neighborhood at dusk.
I miss people writing essays by doing research rather than creating click bait posts on social media and expecting the world to fill in the blanks for them.
My attention span
those analog landline phones were good
when you mad at someone you could just slam it, nowadays the touchscreen hanging up is not the same effect
Actual proper typewriters.
No spellcheck, no always-online license drm, no ai bs forced down your throat, no saving to the fucking cloud.
Just paper, ink, and a machine which hammers the two together with the force of someone who stopped giving a fuck until the bell goes 'ding'.
Lack of FOMO. No constant stream of stuff I am missing out on. Not seeing a childs weekend crushed because everyone said they'd just chill at home, but SoMe clearly shows all gathering leaving you out.
Getting a phone call from a friend, someone else in the house would usually get to the phone first, and you'd pick up another phone on the same line in a diff room, or calling someone you'd usually get their parents first. My step dad had a rough demeanor and would scare my and my siblings friends barking "yeah" at them when he answered we thought was pretty funny because once you knew him he was usually pretty kind & generous and loved cracking dad jokes.
Being care free. Drinking a beer and smoking down by the river at the age of 15, without the possibility of someone posting it. These days I see kids very self cautious. Which is good in someways, somking half a pack a day as a child might not been the best idea. But there is probably a lot of pent up frustration and stress that they cannot release easily. It's probably very taxing mentally.
Being a child with relatively little responsibility
Pain free joints.
Honestly very little. I hated the lack of choices for TV/Radio, being forced to watch/listen to what ever the stations decided everyone must. The limited news telling whatever biases the state wanted pushed. The limited social views and lack of represented diversity. For someone who didn't fit in with mainstream society, in a small town with limited options, it was very alienating being forced to conform to the same as everyone else.
I guess if I had to pick one thing I liked, it was going to the video store and renting a game and playing it for a weekend because I didn't have anything else, even if it was a bad game I still got a lot value out of it.
So I liked the limited choices I could make, but I didn't like the decisions made for me.
As far as writing essays in analog times, I do have fond memories of time spent scratching away with a Quicker Clicker. Running out of lead felt like an accomplishment!
When I was a kid, before we had internet connection, I bought my own copy of Visual Basic and spent evenings coding all sorts of stuff.
These days trying to find consentration to get in the flow is way harder
you could absolutely buy singles of songs if you wanted (I would usually buy my singles on cassette cause they were way cheaper), however it was usually more cost effective to buy the whole album. (if you liked the artist and wanted to take the risk)
usually listening to the entire album a few times will get you some pretty decent songs and it meant you got to take time to really appreciate what you had to listen to. also I found that my enjoyment of stuff would change every listen.
the best case scenario is you bought an album and every single song was a banger. and you just don't get that anymore because you have access to everything all the time. so its much easier to just hit the skip button nowadays.
Being excited to tell your friend something tomorrow, maybe even next week. (Still can do that, but it's less common)
Similar, but not feeling the pressure of being constantly accessible to anyone.
Conversations without someone pulling out their phone or checking notifications on their watch.
Also, not knowing something. Pete Homes has this joke about before the Internet there was not knowing something. You just wouldn’t know where Tom Petty was from. You’d go around asking people if they knew. Finally, a woman tells you and that’s how you meet your wife.
I kinda like the idea of it just being okay to not know something but the ADHD in me is screaming.
When the phone rang at home, in our childhood, my sister and I would excitedly race to answer it. Now when my cellphone rings I get an angsty feelings of dread and only look at it 5 minutes after it stops making noise. I also discovered that Nellie Kostychuk (made up name) was caught drunk in the barn during milking time thanks to the good old party line!