Microblog Memes

Going to the video rental store with my family and browsing for movies to watch. Shelves with multiple copies facing you, then you realise that behind the front ones are blank, empty boxes to bulk up the display and none of the ones on the shelf are the ones you actually take home anyway. Seeing the 3D cardboard cutouts advertising new releases.

I also miss christmas TV. Getting a 2 week TV guide and going through it with a pen putting a star next to the things you wanted to see. Recording one channel while watching another when there was a conflict. Big movies that were at the cinema 6 months to a year ago being on TV. Popular series making good Christmas specials. I guess the scarcity of media made it more desirable and christmas tv was an event. Now it is shit but not only because of what's on, but because you've already seen the food stuff that's on, and the Christmas specials are rarer, and not good. Also there's too much 'classic' TV from the 70s I don't care about. Feels lazy that they rely on filling the program with the old instead of making new.

Nothing lol. I loved when I first got access to the internet in my early teens, the whole world opened up. Playing with friends or reading the same 20 books in the house over and over again felt very repetitive compared to even early '00s internet.

My parents never used to know where I was and had no way of contacting me. At the time I liked that though I I'm glad smartphones exist now so I can keep track of my kids. If they start doing what I did when I was a kid it would worry me.

We also used to jump off a bridge into the local river, but 2 years ago a kid drowned doing that so now I'm worried about it.

Learning stuff from books post full time education. It used to be if you wanted to learn about stuff once you left education you would have to read a book, so picking up a new programming language would be either from courses (assuming work is paying), books (like the O'Reilly ones), and self study.

It required more application from the learner than the internet has enabled as instead of having to read an entire book or at least the relevant chapter, you could just read a few stack overflow questions that were vaguely similar to what you needed to know, then copy and paste the bits that you thought would fit.

AI has made that even quicker, and increased the chance of a wrong or misleading answer, and that assumes you are asking it to explain concepts rather than just getting it to write the code for you and hoping it works.

Its reduced the barrier for entry, but is it actually maintaining output quality as understanding of the topic is almost always not the same.

My dad used to be part of a pre-internet Kate Bush mailing list... In which he would get and send real mail! To send messages, you would make however many copies and mail them to one person who had everyone else's addresses. I continue to think this is super cool and creative.

I miss getting on the computer and AIM and chatting with friends.

• We all used the same software
• Status messages and profile pics
• Not on a phone - no expectation or distraction of being always available.

My paternal grandparents. Best adults in my life, loved them dearly, and I still didn't appreciate them as much as I should have.

I miss that feeling of going to school on Monday and hearing all the shit that went down on the weekend that I wasn’t there for. I lived far from town with no phone 90% of the time (dad worked nights so it had to be off the hook a lot) so I was always last to know anything. It was freeing. I didn’t care that I had to wait to talk to my friends in person about everything.

Hedge porn

Let's start with everything and go from there, shall we?

Turning virtually any high powered device on meant it would have to spin up, power up, cycle, etc. Usually with satisfying whirring, humming, clicking. Nowadays everything boot's up and you might get a chime.

The background noise was pretty high though. Those old circuits and tubes would hum. There was a lot of interference between them, so stereos would click, pop and hum when operating other devices nearby. Things like that.

This doesn’t directly answer your question, but if any of you are tabletop gamers, check out Tales From the Loop. I’m not in any way affiliated with it, but am GMing a game that does its best to recreate this vibe.