CONNECT 41333/ARQ/V90
Not being in constant contact with everyone you know, and not having a neverending stream of notifications assaulting you via your phone.
When you got to see relatives who lived far away, you talked about what had been going on in their life because you probably had no idea.
You read, listened to, or watched the news when you wanted to, unless someone you know told you sooner.
If you had to wait somewhere without a book or magazine, you just sat there with your thoughts. During childhood, you learned how to be bored and practice imagining things.
Clean bodies of freshwater.
Or rivers so polluted the catch on fire.
I feel personally attacked by this comment.
My previous answer to this question was about buying a phone instead of renting from the phone company. I realized that something today’s children may never experience is the government actually enforcing antitrust law, and in the bigger picture, the feeling of trust that the government is there to look out for us and will do the right thing.
(Yeah, that trust was sometimes misplaced, but it existed. We also used to believe that the violators of that trust would be held accountable.)
how annoying it was calling your friend that had the phone number with lots of zeros in it.
I mean, I’m an 80s kid and even I barely know that.
At least you only needed to dial 7 digits.
I wouldn’t use “never get to experience” but i would say it’s much harder to have that real sense of community that we easily found in the 90s, early 2000s, etc.
People are more connected to others but still more isolated from others. We were less connected to other people back then so people made a real effort to come up with fun activities and bond together. For kids, it’s the lack of just playing outside in the neighbourhood with friends. For adults, it’s the lack of third places and community/religious events.
Privacy.
Ownership. (not quasi ownership like ‘buying’ a HP inkjet printer)
alt.binaries.everything
Tying up the landline phone with their dialup modem.
Polio… well they might actually, depending on how anti-science their parents are and if they live in one last two pockets of it, Pakistan and Afgjanistan.
The nightmare PS2 dirty disc screen, and mainstream multiplayer games without anticheat rootkits
Edit: mainstream
Blowing into cartridges before putting them into the console and optionally pushing them to the side or some other voodoo hoping the game would start.
The nightmare PS2 dirty disc screen
To be fair, PS2’s are so damn rock-solid new generations can experience this for many years to come. They just gotta get one.
Yes! Why can’t I play every game like I played Runscape?
Oh that boot sound and hoping you’d make it past… Mostly on PS1 but I still had some of it on 2.
Social media not being the focus of every government, advertising agency and activist organization in existence.
The French revolution.
Looking at France recently, wouldn’t be so sure about that one…
Are the French ever not revolting against something?
Nope. We could and should learn a lot from the French when it comes to making our voices heard.
No, the French are always revolting.
The App Store not being filled with predatory trash
I completely stopped playing games on my phone cos of that
It’s so hard to find remotely good games now… I have hit the point that I don’t even bother looking at anything but paid offline games but even those often have microtransctions. I am glad that you can get a refund most of the time as long as you only used it less than an hour.
When you look for mobile game recommendations in certain communities (like Reddit) you know the store ranking is fucked.
There’s a curated list of no-bullshit mobile games which are real fun, without any microtransactions: https://nobsgames.stavros.io/
Mobile Gaming can be fun. :)
Awesome, thanks!
Setting up your computer before you go to bed to download a demo for a game that’s… 20 MB large! Waking up in the morning to inevitably discover the download failed part way through.
I remember using a program called Go!Zilla to accellerate and manage my downloads, you could even pause downloads!
This think that was basically a P2P downloader.
Waiting for a single image to load on the screen from top to bottom, one line at a time and being charged per minute for the privilege.
I mean change mb to gb and it’s the same story today.
sometimes I still have to do this, sure not for something that’s only 20mb but a 1gb file can take a whole night to download in my uni accommodation. The landlord doesn’t seem to give a shit though because they’re still advertising that the building has “up to 100mb/s” wifi speeds.
1kB/h is still “up to 100mb/s” so he’s not wrong.
“apparently my sister picked up the phooone! Aarrg! $!#@t”
Kids three days won’t get to experience par files
Not as extreme, but I still remember downloading GTA 5 for 16h, that was some shit internet
I’d say it’s as extreme
Remember download managers?
Where my download accelerator plus gang at
Getright was my choice for years, until it decided to scrap an entire 600MB iso I had downloaded over 56k, and start over. Getright pissing me off was thebmain reason why I got pretty good at perl - I decided to write my own download manager.
Sounds like a villain origin story
I’m not denying anything
What a blast from the past! Totally forgot that these were a thing lol.
Having to wind back a cassette or vcr with a paperclip or spoon if the strip got tangled, or even just having to wait for the player to forward/rewind
“Smoking” chewing gum cigarettes.
Exploring the internet by going through a physical “100 coolest websites for kids” book.
Does anyone else remember Stumbleupon?
One of my favorite ways to waste time during my high-school days.
That’s how I found a lot of places I still visit like xkcd.
