What did people (mostly adults) do for fun before electronics? Were there lots of plays being performed all the time...

They fucked ? Or looked at the window ! I guess it varies a lot following the epoch, the location and the class.

They flew kites in thunderstorms.

They died of syphilis

play card games

People used to make up languages for fun. They used to get good at a musical instrument. They used to play sports.

The trick is to get your kids hooked on games that are toy boxes, not just stories. Minecraft is actually a good thing.

none of my elders are over a century old

Have you seen how verbose many 19th century books are? Pick up Melville, Dickens, Dostoevsky, etc. and notice how much of their books consist of describing minutiae or tangential passages. While a lot of literature from this period is quite good in its way, it's hard to argue that most books couldn't be edited down to substantially shorter works without sacrificing their good qualities. However this means a 19th century reader could occupy an entire week's worth of free time reading literature thanks to its verbosity.

Gambling on dice or cards was ubiquitous. Prostitution was common. People would hunt and fish. People who could afford books tended to read much more than a modern man. Most people would have some sort of arts-and-crafts hobby like woodworking for men or embroidery/crocheting for women.

Also, keep in mind that most of the beverages someone drank back then were alcoholic, and jobs were much more physically strenuous. And people were not accustomed to expect the constant activity and stimulation of modern life. Don't underestimate the extent to which a person could find satisfaction just drunkenly reclining on the porch after a hard day's work, sipping some beer/wine and listening to the birds singing.

Journalism was the great American pastime before the depression.

Television ruined it.

read

The literacy was rate was incredibly low during pre-industrial times and before the advent of electricity.

Common folk didn't "read" for pleasure or to pass the time as you are suggesting.

have you heard about something called "reading"?

lmao if you actually believe this

the general trend in most societies in the early modern era was to have arranged marriages at a relatively early age (early to mid 20s for men, even younger for women).

people might have had more sex and at earlier ages, but it was with your husband or wife

I wasn't strictly talking about common folk or limiting myself to pre-industrial times.
Especially given that common folk often had lots of things to limit their free time.

You're just wrong.

People didn't talk about it, but they all did it.

You might find conservatives who just go with whatever the standard for the time was, but most people just did it. The Victorian era was unusually anti-sex, and most people don't look back further than one or two steps for cultural trends like this.

The phrase 'make an honest man/woman out of someone' didn't come from nowhere.

They mostly hung out together, in pubs, or other places, talking about rumours, or recent events. In medieval times, people would look be amused by travelling troubadours, who entertained them with plays, jokes, and very important, news from elsewhere. Lack of mass communication made people who travelled a lot, like merchants, sailors, or pilgrims, welcome guests in inns, because they spread news and rumours, or might have witnessed important events themselves.

>"I get all my historical information from Dungeons & Dragons and RPGs"

I don't play those, but the existence of troubadours is a historical fact. And yes, they amused themselves by telling stories that may or may not have been true. You think gossip is a modern invention?

The same thing people who don't overly rely on electronics today did for fun. They visited each other, or congregated in places they could eat, drink, and converse, or hosted festivals, or played board/card games, or watched live performances.

Get the little fucker a big wheel.

I have this sneaking suspicion that kids would spend a lot more time playing outside if parents didn't feel the need to never let them out of their sight.

I know I would have.

people had sex more

holy shit that sound so fucking boring
glad i don't live in the 1800s, i probably would have blown my brains out

I hate to think about how infantile people might have been. Even if they were more literate, and valued quality over convenience, they were like children. The average shitposter at least has some idea of biology, existentialism, etc.

People back then used to have much larger families. Being an only child was incredibly rare. Siblings would play with each other.

the word you're looking for is "ignorant".

Ignorant is so nondescript. The word alone defines itself, I deign to use it.

but really, how is someone living in pre-internet years "childish" or "infantile" for not knowing modern scientific knowledge.

>The average shitposter at least has some idea of biology, existentialism, etc.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.

>hate to think about how infantile people might have been

There is literally nothing wrong with being an uneducated farmer who has a wife and kids to look after. Human beings didn't evolve for this post-industrial world and that's why an absurd amount of people in the US are on psych meds

>glad i don't live in the 1800s, i probably would have blown my brains out
The less you have the more you are able to get out of the things you do have. Also works when it comes down to finding a thing to do to pass time. Trust me, you'd have survived in the 1800s.

Getting drunk. Yes. Alcoholism was a massive problem once industry made it ubiquitous.

>useful skill
yeah if his dad is trying to be a fucking CIA agent

Journalism has always been terrible

Jessica Valenti pls go

hoop and stick master race

Textbook knowledge has nothing to do with wisdom, faggot. True understanding comes from experience and reflection, literally anyone can recite facts.

Honestly sounds like a pretty good time. And at least people still went out besides that.

Nowadays, most people just spend all their time sitting in front of a TV or a computer without much of any socialising going on. In most smaller cities, bars, theatres and whatnot are almost all close to abandonment.

card games were extremely popular

with what guns? it was the 1800s

...

guess im mistaking it for the 1700 or earlier

Households were harder ro maintain without electrivity.
There ass probably always some work to do, cooking alone needed much more time.

Oh and autistic victorianic etiquette like learning how to make very complex origami like figures out of serviettes.

Nah, literacy spread with protestantism in the 16th century because peasants wanted to learn to read the printed bible.

In the 19th century some places like germany after Bismark had already mandatory schooling for all social classes and even before you had people complaining about the surge of romantic "sinful" literature that got read by commoners.

I remember some newspaper article about engliah gentlemen having a duell on ballons trying to shoot each others balloon with lethal results.

Bored nobles did indeed as you described to get a thrill as it seems.

>There is literally nothing wrong with being an uneducated farmer who has a wife and kids to look after.

There is though

Do you have a lot of knowledge on farming?

Well, I'm not a hundred years old (save maybe in mileage), but like about half of us here (okay, maybe a quarter of us), I am old enough to remember life before the Internet as well as before even coin-op vidya was widespread.

We played sports, and lots of loose-ruled physical games - such cow-boys and indians or sci-fi mashups that equated to said. A bit later in life we started playing table-top RPG's (though that was a rare thing for most, and considered satanic worship by some at the time). It wasn't too long after that vidya started leaking into our lives, but Atari 2600 got old real fast, and in the arcades, you ran out of quarters, so it was still mostly outdoor activities and some mischief. Getting into and exploring some place you weren't supposed to be was always an enticing pastime for male adolescences, at least. Pool, chess, backgammon, checkers, not terribly uncommon, but they were a last resort for most.

Girls played with dolls, played house, and with arts and crafts (and when we were younger, boys played with action figures, of course). Some played sports (there was actually a make-shift all girl fencing club near me). The tomboys played with the boys (platonically, for the most part).

There's wasn't much in the way of games both adults and children could partake, save family board games and cards (and, in our case, table-top RPG). I doubt there ever was much of said, and there's always likely been that cultural divide between the young and the old as a result. Father/son organized camping/hunting activities and such were a thing though - the Boy Scouts, Indian guides, Indian princesses, etc. I'm sure such "training" exercises have always been common, save they have almost no practical use outside of bonding these days.

As for the adults - they seemed to do pretty much what they do today, and I don't think that's really changed all that much in the past few centuries, save in nuance.

Working, reading, playing cards, chess, caring for their children/siblings, making stuff, sometimes just resting.

Depends on period. England entered 19th century with literacy in 40-50% range for instance.

>the general trend in most societies in the early modern era was to have arranged marriages at a relatively early age
For upper middle and higher classes. That is like 5% of society.

You have to go waaaay back before you get to an era where average person wasn't at least rudimentarily versed in philosophy and biology, physics and the like, outside of the frontier. Education was very thorough and much broader than it is today. Anyone who couldn't readily recognize and quote the classics by the time they were a teen was considered too uncouth to talk to, outside of the ghetto.

Not true everywhere, of course, but true of nearly anyone living in western world cities for the past couple of centuries. If anything, we put up with a lot more ignorance today, as we don't expect anyone to actually memorize anything but the most fundamental information - because we've externalized our knowledge to the ease of reference. First to libraries, then to the internet.

Back then, to be recognized as a fellow civilized human man, you had to be a whole lot more educated in a much wider array of things, as the general thinking was that specialization was for menial laborers, farmhands, and insects. Come the Victorian age on, even women were expected to be able to hold an intellectual conversation from memory - which is more than you can say of even men today.