I was born in the 1970s. Pretty awesome actually. You couldn't verify a damn thing. You could lie and tell stories as though they were the truth and people would believe you and they never found out otherwise.
There was nothing at all to distract you from the things you wanted to do. You focused and got shit done. If you wanted to talk to someone distant you had to be tethered to the wall with the phone cord. Paper-based mail was exciting when you sent and received letters. You had to actually get up and drive, walk, bike to your friend's house to talk to them. You had to wait up to 1 month to get photos developed and you had to choose your shots carefully. You had to ask local people for directions when traveling.
Everyone talked to everyone else when you went out somewhere. Sometimes you'd sit down to a meal and have a group conversation with several other people in the restaurant and everyone else would be listening in.
Secrets were kept. Porn was in magazines and on VHS/Beta you had to hide from your parents or randomly find in the woods. When you were out in nature you had to focus on nature and not your phone or battery life. Walkie-Talkie hide and seek was a thing. There were only 3 TV channels, if you turned the antenna correctly. Movies were neighborhood events.
Hidden ponds didn't have trash around them because you were the only person who knew about them. Trails didn't have graffiti and twitter tags, if there were trails. The fish were bigger then. The water cleaner. There wasn't any jet trails in the sky. Rainbows were not for fags. You used gas lanterns and flashlights with massive square batteries around camp.
Where ever you were, you looked out from that spot to everything around you. You didn't look at a screen to determine where your place was in the world. Your place was where ever you happened to be.
I was born in the 80s in a rural area, and that was how it was.
Things changed quickly. Not for the better, mostly.
Charles Lee
I was born in the 80s. 1981. I am envious of the life you lived OP, and i am nostalgic on the life i used to live, before technology became so omnipresent. I remember being a junior or senior in college and discussing with a friend over a pool game how to use search engines... he suggested a try one called Google. I told him i might give it a shot.
I am tired of looking at a dimly lit screen all fucking day whether it be my cell phone screen or my laptop screen at work. I cherish my friends that i can still meet up with or have phone conversations with, but they are the minority as most just use text messaging of some sort. People dont know how to talk on the phone anymore nor do they want to. I miss the days where id talk for hours on end to my classmates and maybe end up having phone sex with the sluttier female ones.
I miss getting lost in a city and not knowing how the fuck to get home. I miss not knowing the answer to something and wondering about it with no solution, sometimes never finding a solution. I miss socializing at arcades and challenging strangers to coin op video games.
The hard thing to accept is that im becoming more and more of a relic. Fewer and fewer people think like me. Wanting to be independent of technology is a thing of the past and i've turned into one of those old farts nostalgically bringing up 'the good old days.'
I salute u OP.
Carter Hernandez
>Everyone talked to everyone else when you went out somewhere. Sometimes you'd sit down to a meal and have a group conversation with several other people in the restaurant and everyone else would be listening in. Sounds like hell.
Grayson Hill
Tell us how it is, to be able to see the Milky Way at night.
Aaron Price
t. Millenifag who can't eat without scrolling
Samuel Russell
It's so fucking disgusting, had to grow up with FB being popular since the first year of highschool
Jason Gray
>tfw the older half of the millennials >tfw still remember being considered a complete weirdo in freshman year of high school for using the computer for stuff besides ms word and school assignments >tfw parents wanted to get me to see a psychiatrist for spending three hours on the internet everyday >tfw now dad spends all of his time watching old music videos from the 70s on YouTube and my mother is glued to her smartphone constantly as well
Jeremiah Barnes
You can still live your life however you want. I will often leave my cell phone at home, I still only shoot photos on film, and I'm into non-digital hobbies like pinball, climbing and sailing (without a GPS). The technological oppression is self-inflicted to a large degree.
Jordan Thompson
Man, I got my invitation to Facebook at 23-24. I was working on my Master's. At that time, it was still only open to students from academic institutions.
I remember thinking....man I am glad I didn't have to worry about how many friends I had or being tagged in pics in highschool.
That must have truly been hellacious. Care to give any stories? I think people born in the early 80's like myself do not truly understand what it must have been like to complete highschool with facebook.
Evan Jenkins
I also do everything you mentioned. I'll leave my cell phone at work so I don't look at it in the evenings and on weekends, and I'll keep it off during work hours. I also have non-digital hobbies (exercise, playing guitar).
But putting up walls to prevent you from accessing technology is different from technology not being there at all. It's easy to revert back to using technology (think using GPS if you're late).
I do agree that on an individual level technological oppression is self-inflicted but technology is becoming more and more intrusive to the point that even if you want to, you really can't avoid it.
Hudson Russell
that's a crazy story. so true too. I remember loving video games but hating computers. My father also hated computers. We would have probably thought you were a weirdo. now 90% of my waking day is on a cell phone or a computer and you would probably think we have really pleb mastery of the tools.
Camden Cook
Yesterday I saw a great black-and-white movie where the basic premise is that a guy visits his friends and his wife each Sunday to play chess with him. It was so comfy, and I don't know when was the last time I played chess with a friend. We used to play Heroes of Might and Magic 3&4 hotseat and joke all the time and have so much fun. Now my brother is just playing fucking World of Tanks all the time and talking with his friends over skype. I just hope that he'll have some meaningful memories from this age...
Evan Powell
not Veeky Forums, fuck off
Jayden Murphy
you fuck off, discussion fits into modern philosophy, political science and how society is changing due to recent historical events like the proliferation of technology and the internet.
OP's post will actually be a primary historical source as evidence that people were awake and realized the damaging events of technology.
Your contribution to this thread will be: "not Veeky Forums, fuck off."
Fuck you space nigga
Jack Reed
i recently began to try living like this again, and its incredibly disappointing. once you slow down and step outside of that sphere of influence you observe others objectively and recognise their actions as previously your own. the internet is a great way to lose conscientiousness. its also a good way to be forgotten about by people almost immediately, without a facebook you might aswell not exist to todays population
Easton Jones
>It's gunna be a primary source one day! You can justify any dumb blogposting with this.
Jack Wood
Haven't logged onto Facebook in two years. Great decision for me. That site is a time suck like no other.
It's true many people will forget about you. You will also forget about many people. I had over 1000 connections on Facebook. Now I'm back to talking to a handful but they are all people I genuinely care about.
Nicholas Collins
youre not missing much, its going to die off and be reborn phoenixlike in the next few years im sure (any anons want to work together and launch a new soc.med. platform? the world is crying out for one) under-21s think facebook is lame as shit, its officially "old people" website to the new generation.
Gabriel Taylor
Truly hell, as a kid I could have never expected to be subjected to such an atrocious psychological torture, it's truly hell growing up with FB when you're naturally paranoid
Jaxson James
Interesting. I could see it coming though. The people who first joined were in college when it started. They went through their twenties on it, had a bunch of party pics to post. Then it expanded globally, and foreigners went through THEIR twenties on it, and had a bunch of party pics to post.
Now the only people who are new to Facebook are truly late-to-the-game oldfags, and they throw shitty parties.
That and all the spam/ads/pointless news probably will be the collapse of Facebook.
Henry Hill
Inefficiency could be better including legal and administrative inefficiency caused by the choice political model e.g. Democratic processes and rights might hinder the authorities from carrying out their functions but is overall better than not having them or labor unions and laws might hinder businesses but are better in the long run.
Gabriel Martin
Did you ever get made fun of for not having enough friends? Did you ever get made fun of for not having the right friends? Did people not accept your friend requests and make fun of you for sending them? Did people post embarassing or insulting pics of you and tag you on them? Were you old enough to be recorded or beat up on video or were phones not at that level then?
I could see that stuff happening in my school if we had had the tech. We had bullying but it ended swiftly: you got pushed into the locker but it was over. The online/facebook bullying could just last forever. I just can't imagine going through that shit. Part of it makes me not want to have kids because I wouldn't want to subject them to that shit.
Sorry for the questions, but I'm curious.
Parker Edwards
user I want to be your friend :C I wish I could have met you in high school
Connor Gray
>can't
More like don't have to.
Aaron Miller
>You couldn't verify a damn thing. Which is what allowed stupid movements to gain popularity like black nationalism, Mormonism, New Age, and various communes.
Jordan Morris
Honestly, the new major social media platform is just a suite of social media apps on your phone. There's not going to be a huge unified platform because people don't need them anymore and they use all the different apps for different things. The new smart phones give us the ability to seamlessly navigate through to any platform we want, so we can basically tailor our experience by picking a bunch of highly specific social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Tinder, Discord) a la carte and alt-tabbing through them, instead of having to use a singular generalized one (Mybook, Facespace) with a ton of bloat features and random notifications (like pokes and embedded mp3s *barfs*). This method is also pretty much mom proof for the next 3-4 years, so that has its own distinct advantage.
Oliver Mitchell
People's ability to verify information hasn't actually changed. Look at /pol/ or liberal Facebook to see this in action.
Jonathan Nelson
>Did you ever get made fun of for not having enough friends?
I was made fun of by my classmates and they also published embarrassing photos and videos of me on Facebook, laughing at me in the comments ( I was 14-15)
It's not really about the number of friends any way, it's about the number of photos you have hanging out with friends and the numbers of posts your friends tag you in etc the number of likes, you could see I was a social misfit because I had barely any photos with friends while my classmates (especially the female ones), had billions of photos at parties or hanging out..
I was always extremely paranoid back then, even more than now ( I had OCD since I was 13, I literally had to move objects around the house and perform other rituals to keep away the intrusive thoughts, now I've managed to beat it completely, I don't know how, surely not being on FB anymore helped.)
Colton Robinson
Meh it's arguable how influential it really is. Retards have always been present. But yeah spam content which began with popup ads later with all the garbage filling up youtube and recently with vines are probably the most detrimental things to the internet right now. The future could be a free to download program like tor where people can share content and communicate without regulation from a private company.
Henry Sanchez
This is entrepreneurship gold. Some insights here.
also, yfw you're too old to know wtf discord is.
Levi Clark
discord is basically the new vent with an irc-like chat interface. its pure gamer shit.
Dominic Sanders
>tfw have clinically diagnosed ADHD
Jesus christ getting off of the internet clears my head like nothing else. Its like im predisposed to waste my time on here.
Xavier Hall
I was born in 1995.I didn't have an internet connection in the house until I was 15 for some reason.I lived and still do outside of the city.I was raised with music and movies from the 70s and 80s.They were much more straightforward,optimistic and imaginative.I am 22 now my birthday was 11 days ago.I feel empty and cold inside.When I was a kid I was fascinated with the natural world and watched all of David attenborough's documentaries and wanted to become a biologist.I am majoring in biology now and honestly the more I learn the more I want to disconnect from the shitty reality our life is.Yesterday I read an article where neuroscientists say that our emotions and thoughts,virtues I loved like honesty,honor and empathy,love and imagination are all chemical reactions hardwired into our brains,a byproduct of evolution so we can survive and pass our genes.That we are just drugged biological computers and that life has no meaning since consciousness ends when we die.I watched my grandparents die last year and I could see how unglamorous our life really is.I used to identify with movies like lotr and star wars where yoda said that we are spiritual beings and not crude matter,I used to dream a lot and think that there might be something better after all this.I didnt believe in a specific god but I believed we are all connected somehow and that death isn't the end.Now I think I am really depressed,I am like that for a month,I never had a girlfriend as most people in my age are just swallow and don't connect with me like I would like to.Do you believe there might be still a chance?
Connor Lee
hahah still too old
tfw you don't know what a vent or an irc is :)
Cooper Morgan
It meets the 25 year requirement so, yes, it IS Veeky Forums.
Jacob Rodriguez
this is deep man. hurts to hear from someone your age. you are in your physical prime right now. live it up best you can.
Jacob Sanchez
Discord is text and voice chat for gamers where you're part of private lobbies with a group of other gamers. IRCs have been around since the late eighties so I doubt you're too old to know what it is, just out of the loop.
Nathaniel Thompson
>naturally paranoid >using NSAbook
Aiden Foster
Im 23 and lost my Dad 3 years ago to metastatic cancer in his bones, wasnt sure if the hospice doctors OD'd him on morphine or if the cancer did him in since he was so tolerant to phentanyl.
All I can say is that who fucking cares if they're all chemicals.
Feelings matter man, theyre an ideal, they're ephemeral, but they exist and are worth fighting for and hoping for. You can say love is some lovey dovey shit thats all chemicals, but let me tell you what love is for a couple that was together for 20 years.
Love is wiping the shit off their bed ridden hemorrhoids because the cancer makes it painful to sit down on the toilet and they had to shit standing up in the shower. Love is going through every experimental procedure and drug trial you can find and still blaming yourself because you couldnt save the person you love.
I feel you with the girlfriend thing man, i aint have any luck, was allways the weird antisocial ADHD kid thats had trouble holding down friends, but goddamn it do not give in to the sort of nihilism that says thst everything is meaningless and that there is no hope that you can find happyness. It only blinds you from what you can reach for.
I spend day after day shitting on myself because I can't take control of my ADHD and achieve what I want to achieve. To the point where the self hatred keeps me locked in bed. But it passes, and i accomplish something every now and then. I get to feel some of that young optimism that you mentioned and it makes it all worth it.
Dont give up man, im saying this as much to convince you as to reinforce it in myself, but dont follow that road.
Julian Fisher
I'm the guy from '81 above. Lost my dad less than a year ago. The pain is real. I'm really sorry for your loss. Don't know how I would have handled it at 23. You are stronger than I am for sure. Also, great post.
Liam Perry
Im sorry for your loss.However if life is only as we know it and death is just the final note,how can I hope for anything more?For example imagine our world without the music the movies the art.It is just a calculated cold place.
Jacob Thompson
also,thank you for trying to help.You sound like a really good person.
Eli Clark
I made a fake Facebook account so that I can check out some profiles that are otherwise inaccessible if you don't log in.
Blake Allen
Sounds like you're stalking an ex that you can't quite get over, my Veeky Forumsbro
William King
I'm 22 as well and have gone down the nihilistic road and all this crap with white genocide and Jewish globalist control of the world really does me in. I try to focus on naturally masculine things that appeal to me. I'm going fishing later today. I also was never one to have many friends or even a gf even though several girls liked me. I can remember not having anyone to eat lunch with in high school especially.
Christian Sanders
Agreed. When you're thrown into the world, there's a vast range of existential possibilities that have already been set before you, based off of your circumstances, your history, etc., that makes those choices matter to you. Neurobiological chemicals allow those choices to matter to you in a physiological way in order to keep our conscious selves invested in the world around us. But the mere physicality of it all doesn't mean that it's not an exciting roller coaster without personal responsibility or destiny. Make the best out of your life.
Jordan Bell
Life doesnt have to be only as you know it.
The music, movies, art, all the best ones have taken a toll on their creators. A bit of suffering in exchange for things that are valuable. Focusong on the pain blinds you to what is possible.
Just by the sheer act of wishing for more, and believing it to be possible, you can better bare the harder times. You have to find the point where you're okay with failing but not discouraged to keep trying.
William Bailey
To continue. Just because death is the final note, doesn't mean you cant have some manner of choice over what that damned note ends up being.
Are you conscious after death? No. But if you were, wouldn't you want to look onto it with some satisfaction and not regret?
Lincoln Young
What the fuck is this thread? Anons being caring and sympathetic to each other. Have we all lost our minds?
I'll share my story. I'm 20. My father is an old school computer programmer, so I grew up with computers and an internet connection for as long as I can remember. Always been a hardcore gaymer xd, never really went outside except for church league soccer practices.
I remember picking up MapleStory, my first online game, back when the level cap was still 180. I convinced a friend of mine to play with me. I'd call him on the landline telephone and that's how we'd play together -- tapping away at our keyboards while the landline stood up on speaker phone next to the computer. Around high school, I started feeling really anxious about my nerdiness and went full redpill alpha douchebag. Since then, I've become more comfortable in my own skin, feel no guilt about liking video games over more masculine or active hobbies, and developed a healthier attitude towards women.
Cell phones started becoming a big deal in middle school, and I hated it. I called them a "fad" like pagers even though I knew they were here to stay. Everyone around my started getting Razers and eventually smartphones. I caved about eighth grade and got a way out of date flip phone, didn't get a smartphone until 2015. I still hate it, often I fantasize about throwing it out the window. Nobody else understands my frustration with it. I don't like being connected all the time, because it reminds me that nobody ever calls or texts me.
My high school gave everyone their own iPad. The camera was incredibly shitty so the nudes we sent to each other were garbage. We were probably one of the first, but now my professors sometimes tell me their elementary schoolers get assigned tablets or laptops. That's unthinkable to me. My high school was like a pre-college, we had to work on multimedia documents and presentations and deliver them to our teachers by email. What does a fourth grader do with a laptop?
Samuel Nguyen
Sounds comfy desu. I sorta got a similar experience by being poor in a tiny Illinois town but by my teen years it was pretty much full tilt with the technology
Zachary Miller
Grew up in the 90s. Never use social media.
I feel left out of the digital society outside of internet boards. The very idea of putting my real name out there on the internet freaks me out.
William Young
Try psychedelics responsibly and proper set/setting. The world is far from depressing, trust mw
Wyatt Reed
Cool story bro.
If you think iPads to 4th graders is bad, what do you think about some schools suggesting we ban handwriting classes altogether and just teach kids how to type at an early age?
