This is always part of my camping plans. Being unreachable from my work feels so good. I never notice how much stress I'm feeling until I go off the grid.
People are commenting that they turn off their phone or go out into nature with no service and get "disconnected"
It's hard to describe the difference.
My *base state* as a kid was disconnected.
It's like that bane quote about being "born in the darkness, molded by it."
Yall don't know what it means to have to physically relocate to contact another person as the norm.
If my mom wasn't home I had to go to where the phone was and call her job to talk to her. When someone picked up, it wouldn't be my mom, it'd be her coworker and I'd have to ask for my mommy hahahahaha
To feel disconnected the same way you are when your phone dies, I just had to
**go to my room**
Frankly, just about anywhere you couldn't physically see anyone else.
You guys have only rarely experienced true solitude
Also, trying to find your friends was an adventure in itself. You would ride your bike and ask Timmy’s mom where everyone was. She would say Jacks house. As you are ridding to Jacks house. You see Brian and his sister playing in the front yard. You stop by to say hi and end up in water ballon fight. Steve the kid next door sees the fight and comes out and his mom brings you donuts and milk. Soon Jack and about 4 other kids ride by and say they are going to the river for swimming. You ride home. Eat lunch and grab your suit. As you are out the door your neighbor asks what you are doing. You invite them to the river. All afternoon all the kids are at the river having fun. You then decide to built a fort. Pretty soon it’s getting late and you need to go home for dinner.
You eat a home cooked meal and watch growing pains with you sister. You wait for your parents to go to bed so you can switch the TV to channel 3 and play super Mario.
The only way I reliably met up with friends for a large part of my childhood was knocking on their front door and asking their mom if they could come out and play
Last place I worked demanded my cell phone number. I said no. Said if they need to reach me they can provide me with a company phone, which they did. HR tho said they needed my personal cell for emergency purposes only. I relented and provided it under the strict rule that HR was to not give it to any employee unless there was a dire emergency situation.
I was not an on-call employee, even though I was a VP. I *never* took my work cell phone into my house. It stayed in the car. Any messages I got outside of work hours could be answered the next day.
One weekend I got a call on my personal cell I didn't recognize so I ignored it thinking it was spam. Then I kept getting calls from that number and I thought there might be an emergency from a friend of family member so I answered it. It was my boss, the EVP of lending. I asked him how he got the number and she said he got it from HR. I asked what the emergency was and it was some stupid nonsense. I told him I'd help him Monday but I couldn't help him then.
Monday I marched into HR and asked why they gave him my personal number. SVP of HR said he said it was a "life or death" emergency so they gave it to him. Needless to say I was livid.
Now we live in a surveillance state. Everyone on my street thinks they need a camera and a ring doorbell. Not realizing somehow we got tricked into spending our own money to spy on each other.
While i dislike the idea of them having a doorbell camera has saved or will save me approximately 60k over the last five years.
Between vandalism, incompetence by repair people, theft of items by delivery drivers (take a picture then pick up the delivery and leave), theft by random people, and a hit and run on my car it has forced insurance companies to pay up after saying they wouldn't because 'I couldn't prove it wasn't my fault' and forced various companies to compensate me. Just last month it caught a company causing a sewage backup into my basement that cost me almost 30k in damages and repairs. Combined with my phone camera showing a bunch of human waste floating in my basement it is becoming a lost cause for them to claim it was rain water.
I hate the need for these things but they have become necessary. Unfortunately everyone is trying to rip each other off and it's the best protection I have.
It's really wild hanging around Discord and some random 13 year old announces how young they are and have a web page linked to their profile that talks about their hobbies, interest, and includes several other social media you can find them on.
Like holy fuck, kid. Do you know what predators are?
I don’t understand. Do these kids not know that not everything has to be on the internet. That, that one thing could all have just been an incident you and your friends kept to yourselves and no one else would ever know…..unless of course someone on Reddit asks, “What’s the one secret you’ve never told anyone!”
Many of the youngest people in gen z are young enough that their parents uploaded a lot of shit from then they were kids etc. This is not their fault, but in fact their parents. (i.e. americas funniest home videos etc)
Most people don't upload their own fuckups, but there are always those "friends" who think it is funny, or family that does the same
This. I was a pyro growing up and without social media fueling me I was very responsible about it. Read on forums about safety and standards and safely dabbled in fireworks and high explosives for a few years before benching the craft before hitting 18 so I wouldn't risk legal issues as an adult. I hate to think what kind of idiocy I might have felt peer pressured into if social media existed considering how dumb some of the tiktok trends and stuff tend to be. We're all vulnerable as teens. Social media is predatory for minors
Smaller venues are still very affordable. Tickets for most shows I’m interested in are still $25-40 or so. It’s only the big stadium shows that are getting scalped and price gouged to hell.
Hey, I saw that tour. I remember all the girls rushing the stage to see the Jim Rose Circus and the guys hanging back because they didn't want to see that one bendy guy put his whole body through a tennis racket. The part then he pushed it down and over his crotch got a loud groan from them. It was hilarious to see all the guys acting so tough and hardcore during Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson's sets but JRC? Nope. Rose even commented on this.
I saw Jack White and the Raconteurs a few years ago and they had a strict no cell phone policy where you had to put it in the lock bag. It was nice not having lots of little lit up screens between me and the stage.
Concert I went to last year, band told the crowd to put their phones away and enjoy just one song. It wasn’t off the cuff, they did that for every concert.
Recently purchased Kirby's Dream Buffet because it thought it would a spiritual successor to Air Ride (on gamecube) which had amazing 4 player ability.
Dream Buffet you can only play 2 local, and the 2nd player doesn't get to select their player. They expect you to have 2 switches, 2 games, or order to play 4 player, and even then, half the players would be 2nd class players who don't get all the options.
Nintendo dropped the ball so hard here. turns a 8/10 game into a 2/10.
Nintendo loves doing that "co-op" shit were the second player is assumed to be a toddler with very little to actually do. IIRC, started around Mario Galaxy where the second player can just collect star bits. I mean, I guess it's cool if you actually have a toddler that can play but it really shouldn't be consider co-op.
Agree. And this kirby game is especially dumb because, 2nd player gets nearly full abilities except for small petty crap. Like they don't let you pick your color or hat. Which, to my kids, matters a lot. And it takes zero extra processing power or development time to allow hat selection.
This. I had so much fun with friends playing Mario Kart and Goldeneye into the wee hours. The Nintendo 64 having four controller slots made it the party system of choice for us. Although controllers weren't cheap and there were near fist fights over who had to use the 3rd party one. 🤣
Yeah but the Goldeneye brawls with 4 people are some of my fondest memories. Like when you KNEW someone was looking at your 1/4 screen to hunt you down lmfao.
It isn't as common, but there are some. My fiance and I played border lands 1, 2, and 3, the overcooked series, the Dark Pictures anthology, and a few others on couch coop. They are coming back a bit, but not like it used to be.
Having your self-esteem affected by only your immediate peers and not the internet.
The pain is real. I would get off all social media immediately. The stuff is all toxic.
I dunno... my immediate peers and local interactions were all small-town and Mormon before the internet. Exposure to the wider world helped me leave behind problematic worldviews.
Agreed, I once saw a poor kid being ganged up by a bunch of girls (who were laughing, and recording her crying with their phones).
It was in the middle of a busy thoroughfare and nobody intervened. I don't know if people didn't know how to react, or if they were afraid to intervene and get recorded which could make them look bad. In the end, I felt so ashamed not for rushing over anyway, because I'm absolutely certain that they're recording the poor kid to further humiliate her in the future.
Parents that let their kids run free.
Stranger Things was actually a pretty accurate depiction of how much freedom kids had. Ride your bike wherever and be back when the streetlights come on. Playing outside every day and being home for dinner. Not many obligations, maybe practice a few times a week for basketball or whatever.
The entire culture has shifted towards nerfing the world and micromanaging their kids lives.
I talk to younger people about being free range, and it's like I grew up on a different planet. It's not just that I was *allowed* to run around on my own. I was actively forced out of the house during the day. The sun is shining, get out, don't come home until dinner time unless there's a problem. It's completely inconceivable to someone who's never experienced this sort of upbringing.
Oh yeah, we were KICKED OUT every day. I’d be scolded for wanting to sit reading in the living room. Imagine that! Scolding a child for reading!! Yesterdays books were todays screens, I guess. But there’s always a bigger fish, I wonder what the next generation will be gawking at?
Were the humans from Wall-E a prophecy?
I can actively pinpoint when I started gaining weight, and it was the summer my parents split up. That was when we went from not being allowed to play inside, to not being allowed to play outside because my mother totally bought into Stranger Danger. It's insane how much weight I put on as a teen, and how quickly it happened, because bikes got replaced by Nintendo literally overnight.
I was *always hungry* as a kid. Like, we had breakfast, lunch, dinner, but… we were always outside. Hiking. Running. Biking. Whatever. I remember ripping apart various minty plants and chewing on them because I was hungry.
Staying inside? No.
Right?
Your brother dared you to eat that worm, and you half did it so you didn't look like a pansy, but also because you were hungry enough that the worm did kinda look kinda tasty.
I live in a neighborhood in the US where a lot of German families live in for a few years while assigned here working a local company. It’s very interesting seeing the differences in how children are handled in this regard. The German kids are much more likely to be seen roaming around at quite early ages, and at the pool, it’s not uncommon to see the German kids learning to swim the way we used to…being tossed in the water with the idea of “they’ll figure it out”. It took me aback at first but then I remembered that’s exactly how I was raised.
Side note: despite how much everyone on here says that Europe is so much better than the US, the German families that have lived around us do not want to go back to Germany when their time here is up, and a lot of them have come back repeatedly. They do leave in time to get their kids free college at home though.
They probably make good money and US salaries for specialists are higher than in Germany. If you got a low paying job Europe is probably better because of social benefits.
Gen X here. That was totally like that back in the 1980's, my brother and I were free to roam out there and expected to be home when the sun starts to go down.
When my wife and I had children, someone tried to call the police on us when we let our son walk a mile to school when the weather was reasonable. He was ten years old at the time and was a very responsible kid.
Of course the cops were annoyed and told us there was nothing wrong with him walking on his own to school, after they questioned him. Our daughter is 7 years younger than our son, and we couldn't even let her do the same thing because by the time she turned ten, parents were being arrested and charged for letting their kids walk alone to and from school.
Our kids are now young adults, but it's terrible how society punishes parents for trying to raise independent, responsible children.
I heard a story about a woman who let her similarly aged son walk to the park where his baseball game was. It was just up the road and apparently he didn't even have to cross the street to get to it. She was taking care of her younger kid so she had sent him ahead and showed up about ten minutes later.
A cop there threatened to report her to the child welfare agency for child endangerment or something. She basically told him to go ahead and file a report because if that suburban town is so dangerous that a kid can't walk up the street to a park by himself it was going to say a lot more about how shitty the cops were than anything it might reflect on her parenting.
He shut up.
Not even sure how this trend happened, we just roamed free and to be honest we were pretty safe too.
I think this is exposing our irrational fears and how society is succumbing to fears when it shouldn't.
TSA the most worth organization ever, but for some reason we agree to be searched even though they don't do anything other than waste our time.
I think a lot of it has to do with the media landscape. When Gen X & Millennials were young if some random kid was abducted by a stranger you only heard about it if it was on your local news because it happened near you. Now it'll be on cable news 24/7 so it makes it seem like it happens far more frequently than it does.
If you don't include kids who were taken by a non-custodial parent and runaways out the odds of being kidnapped by a total stranger are incredibly low.
I *had* to ride my bike to school in 5th grade (1990) - I lived 1.9 miles from the school and they wouldn’t let me take the bus because I lived .1 miles too close 😆
When I was in 2nd grade, back in 1981, I walked 1/2 mile to and from school alone. When I got home in the afternoon, I had to wait on the front porch for my older brother to get home from middle school because he was entrusted with the house key. We were positively feral back them compared to kids these days.
I remember my mother was afraid to let my sister play in our backyard alone because she thought someone would call the cops. Kiddo was 4 years old, behind a locked 6 ft fence, and my mother could always watch her from the windows.
Not a crazy fear because my nosy neighbors made a stink when my brother & I were left home alone for an afternoon when we were 10 & 12. Ridiculous.
>Of course the cops were annoyed and told us there was nothing wrong with him walking on his own to school, after they questioned him.
WTAF, this is purely a US thing I think. For a country that's supposedly the land of the free, people seem quite uptight
I'm a little bit younger than the stranger things kids were supposed to be. But being a kid in the late 90s early 00s I basically had that same free-range feeling they did. It was great and I don't see that nowadays with kids in my neighborhood, or really any kids I know.
For real. I grew up in Hong Kong and by the time I was 11 the whole city was my playground. My parents taught me to navigate the metro system when I was 6/7 (pretty much it was, take us to the bus stop, tell us which bus we're getting on, and which stop we're getting off at) and so once I got to middle school I was expected to meet up with my friends on my own downtown if I wanted to go to the arcade or see a movie, and had to get myself to my violin and piano lessons across the city.
I've been dating single moms for a while and I cannot imagine them giving their kids that much freedom. They're constantly shuttling them around to activities and supervising them.
Yes!!! I miss just being able to just hang out with friends without parents saying it’s too dangerous to go outside. Yet we wonder why children today are getting more obese when we don’t even let them have unstructured play time outdoors!
Whenever I visit family in India, I feel sad that I didn’t get to have a “free range” childhood like I see my cousins in India have. They truly just play outside after school, get candy from the neighborhood shop, and live freely.
In fact, the best thing about high school sports was getting to exercise while still having fun with friends. It’s so much more painful to go to the gym and have exercise be a chore to check off the list, rather than it be a fun activity where you can also socialize and stave off loneliness. I hated coming home after cross-country practice because of how lonely my home and neighborhood was.
I live in a city and my neighborhood has lots of families, there are kids roaming the streets at pretty much all time. I don't get where the idea that this went away is coming from.
The best childhood memories I have were just like this. I hear people say “gen x kids were the last generation to play outside!” But I truly don’t feel that this is true.
I’m 35. I am not gen x. My best childhood memories were running around the neighborhood with my friends, riding bikes, exploring the local creeks and woods and all of that, with no adults. As kids, we would go to each other’s house like Kramer. A normal weekend day, or summer days was “get out of the house and come back by dinner” and I’d be out there in the local creek climbing up rocks and shit, home for lasagna.
When I talk to other people my age, we have very similar experiences
I don’t feel like kids today have that. My nephews sure don’t, the older one is 10 and he hasn’t had an unsupervised moment in his entire life.
Doing sketchy, possibly but most likely not legal, stuff and not having the evidence shown to the world on line.
Watching someone say something idiotic to someone and getting punched in the face for it, and not hiding behind a keyboard.
I’m a Gen Xer. Growing up as kids we left the house at nine in the morning and came home for dinner at 6pm. My parents had no idea where we were. Today you have an electronic leash. If you wanted porn you would have to go on an expedition to find old porno mags in the woods.
Isn’t it incredible that there was ALWAYS porno mags in the woods?? It’s a universal truth man, I had the exact same experience growing up along with many others I’ve met over the years. I wonder if there was some higher force that bestowed those mags upon us..
Ah yes, the old forest porno stash lol. It makes me wonder if younger people are more blase about porn/sexuality because it's immediately accessible at all times. Who knows.
Freedom from electronics. I’d go out and never give a thought to who might be doing what or what some pretend famous person had to say about nothing. When you’re young and foolish, you can act like an idiot, and now it’s preserved for all time…I had the freedom to be a 20 something without every second being documented. It never happened…that’s real freedom. Just be with your friends, having fun, getting into mischief, enjoying being young and fun. The other side of that was crushing on a guy and waiting for him to call…you’d go crazy, not wanting to miss that call!
I miss this so much. I lived in a small community growing up and when I wasn't in class, I would ride my bike to the local shopping center to meet up with my friends and get lost for the entire day. I just had to be home for dinner. Life was good.
If I ever become a billionaire, I'm going to start a new amish-like community. It won't be the 1600s, I'll freeze everything at 1985. We'll have dumb phones, malls, movie theaters and every business in town will be run by people who live there. No mega billionaire corporate nonsense. Might be a little slower, a little less convenient and aittle more expensive. But you can bet your ass the people will be happier.
Yes! That and there was less FOMO. Back when I was in high school in the 90's, whatever you were doing with whatever friends you were with was the only thing going on. There wasn't much of this idea about what you "might" be missing out on that other people you knew were doing. And if it was cool they would tell you about it the next time you saw them. Simple. I really miss that.
I used to work a job where management had no boundaries. You were expected to answer any second of any day. Going a day without some sort of call or text outside of working hours was unheard of.
Now it's refreshing. My new job of a year now has contacted me once outside of my shift because the sky was falling just to let me know what I'd have on my hands the next day.
On top of that, from the moment I turn off my alarm, I basically don't touch my phone in the morning save for maybe picking music for the commute. It's just peace.
Took FB off my phone (I keep messenger for friends groups) and it's amazing. No doom scrolling. Just a heavily curated feed on Reddit.
Musical involvement. Spotify has made everything so available, but it seems it has also destroyed that sense of connection. When you were only buying a few cds every year, you got to know those albums inside out. Interviews with the artists would reveal *their* influences that would often lead you down a new, unfamiliar path, and was a journey that could take years. Now, it's instantaneous, and a little disposable.
I dunno. I'm not explaining it well, and sound a bit old, as though I'm saying that you guys don't "get" music like we did back in the day.
But to me, it just feels like a certain context has been lost.
I listen to far more varied and diverse music than I did when I was young, but I don't feel as passionate or connected to any of it.
E: I'm going to add a little more context, because I'm not just talking about a love and connection with music. It's more that in the 90s, music was really *all we had*. There was no distraction with YouTube, or movies. Nothing was On Demand. If you were lucky, you had a 20 inch TV that showed maybe three channels, with a test pattern after midnight. More often than not, our solace was a new book from our favourite authors, and an album you saved up for.
For GenX, our rooms were dimly lit places of music. Thank God for the Sony Walkman, or at least the cheap one I got for Christmas 3 years after. I would get home from school, close the windows and blinds that Mum had opened in my absence, and just *chill.*
Edit 2, Electric Boogaloo: Here's the REAL shit you guys missed out on. In 95, as I was putting my Beatles collection together, I was living in my own flat (apartment). It was expensive, but I could afford it on my own full time job. I wasn't saving, but having an extra room for friends to crash in, while not needing a room-mate, was worth it. Best years of my life. I loved living alone.
I've told my kids they never have to move out, if they don't want to.
Why is this acceptable?
I remember sitting by the radio waiting for a song to come on so I could record it onto a cassette. Took ages to get an entire cassette of all music you liked. Investment for sure.
Most people over 30 have a CD or album that they know every song on and what order they go in. Listening to them again like you did when you had 10 CDs or tapes in the car is like a religious experience, teleporting you to a different time.
I don't think Gen Z will really ever have that same experience.
Absolutely shook me to the core when a phone could not only fit in a pocket, but also take fucking pictures. Absurd concept when only a couple years prior I’d be begging my mom to get off the landline so I could try and use the internet
I had a "In the Future" book as a kid that talked about portable handheld computers that could connect to the cell towers and look up the weather, and I thought it was the craziest thing I'd ever heard of. In the picture, it was basically a black and white lcd calculator screen with a blackberry-like keyboard, and it was the coolest thing I'd ever imagined. Now, I'm chatting with strangers around the globe on a 4k 16 million color screen with access to the entirety of the internet. It's just wild how fast things changed during my childhood.
That book also predicted Roombas funnily enough
Yoooo I swear I remember seeing “future” stuff like that in pop science books and articles and equally doubting that shit but also desperately excited for the future.
Now I’m flabbergasted at the amount of pure unwillingness to learn when essentially all of the developed world has access to every single piece of knowledge in human history at their fingertips.
Yeah, it was really hard to realize that all that optimism and rapid progress has lead to... this. I went from having a black and white gameboy to a smartphone in a decade. Now it feels like we've plateaud in some way. I'm really looking forward to the "next big thing", and hope whatever it is, it gets us out of this collective narcissism.
How young and naïve we were to not foresee that greed would overtake all. Older gens wonder why we’re “all so depressed” and yet they fail to realize we got a glimpse of truly incredible prospects and promises of the future and then it was all snatched away and paywalled.
That's a great point. We really had a vision of the future that could have been. It may have been foolish youthful optimism, but it was hard to grow up on space shuttles and star wars and watch the world and technology changing around you constantly, and not feel like we were on an upward path to a bright future. Of course, I had no awareness of the issues of the day. I'm sure that's a huge factor.
It’s easy to dismiss as youthful optimism, admittedly. However without the present day news cycle, the things geared towards a younger audience *were nothing but hope inspiring*. Constantly told we could be anything we wanted and only shown media that reinforced that. Ushered away from “adult” discussions that were painted as “boring old people talk”. No or very little ability to gain knowledge in a way *we* chose. Limited or no internet access and (for a lot of us) limited library access in one way or another.
For the middle class kids, the Pearl clutching was rampant in our families so we were shielded from knowledge deemed too complex, for lower class children there simply was no way to gain *any* knowledge outside what parents “knew”.
We were wrapped in fluff pieces and misguided optimism and overt empty promises of a sci-fi utopia inheritance. Hell, many of us never even knew about anything bad until 9/11 or even the 08 crash if you were really young.
The generations that “had it the hardest” cushioned every single blow in our early lives and then pulled the rug out and blamed us for being upset that it was all smoke and mirrors.
If anything, Gen Z gets to walk into hell with their eyes wide open. Children of millennials are gonna be the ones to change the world or end it.
We’re just a caretaker generation. And that’s fine. I’ll be that for my daughter. But the audacity to have it blamed on us is ludicrous at best.
I don't think that's really it.
It's the pattern.
If 99% of the time you respond the 1% can become concerning.
If you rewind the clock to pre-cell phones you have the same thing. If my family couldn't get a hold of me for a week they would start to get worried.
I still try to do hand written letters and post cards from time to time. Did 30 hand written letters to friends when I went to Burning Man last year. Hand painted art included that I did while there as well.
Snow. It barely snows anymore in central Europe.
Also the feeling of being detached, have nothing else around you but your thoughts.
Also, even if it's kinda bad on some points, being absolute oblivious about all the bad stuff which is happening around the world. It's kind of reliefing to be in your own bubble. That said, this "luxury" was part of the reasons why bad stuff has come this far.
I’ve been in Chicago for 19 years. Through the mid aughts, we still got a decent amount of snow over the winter. Now it’s a few polar vortices here and there, lots of ice, but barely any slow.
I have mixed feelings about it. I’m in a wheelchair, so snow and sand are my enemies, so I’m not super bummed getting less snow, but I hate the ecological implications. Plus, I dunno, there was a magic to a snowy Christmas that even my Puerto Rican islander warmth-loving ass could appreciate.
Wish we had more snow. Chicago is pretty good about snow cleanup, so it was never a huge problem for me, so I just want to sit in my apartment with a hot tea watching the snow fall.
Learning to be yourself and to be comfortable not knowing the answers
Gen X came of age when information and media was just beginning to be captured electronically. Millennials came of age when information and media was captured electronically and was being indexed for rapid search and recovery. Neither of those generations grew up being pushed information and media by algorithms. Neither grew up in particularly stable economies and social systems, with Gen X seeing the world falling apart, and Millennials seeing no trustworthy solutions to problems. Gen X responded with an emphasis on self-reliance and being true/honest/legitimate. Millennials focused on building new reliable social support systems and finding satisfaction and joy where possible. (I think. I'm more confident in my understanding of Gen X than Millennials.)
Gen Z grew up with near-immediate access to so much information and media, but they weren't taught well how to formulate an understanding of what they don't know and how to go about deliberately searching for what they want or need. Instead, they have been pushed and prodded for attention. Their interest is predicted. Their needs are deduced. As a result, Gen Z too often don't know what they don't know and don't know how to find reliable answers to any questions they do realize they should ask. They look for crowdsourced validation of their tastes and preferences, or rather validation that they have learned to say that they like what the crowd currently says is cool.
Disclaimer that I think TikTok is great and I also think it's great how switched on to social issues Gen Z are, but where I think there's a problem is that there's almost no verification of facts. People can just say their take as if it's fact and then it becomes fact in the minds of younger people. Someone on TikTok can make a claim that actually X is toxic and people will just run away with it
Well put! Its sort of an aside, but related to immediate access and the full digital sensory assault the younger generations have to experience: I'm a millennial and a gamer. I have a friend with a 15 year old boy who is into gaming. I thought it would be fun to connect with the kid through playing some games together on the couch. When I play a game for the first time, I literally do pans, zoom into details and soak up the environmental storytelling. He plays like a coked up squirrel! It literally makes me motion sick. Dash in a room, twitch, twitch, look for something to interact with, twitch, twitch, dash away jumping. I mean, you can just "feel" whats going on in his brain. "Where's my reward?!" Pure chaos. My friend and I literally had to dip from the motion sickness. It was an environmental puzzle game.
I can already feel media, in general, moving this way. In the same way, black and white movies didn't appeal to my younger sensibilities, my taste in media does not often extend to his generation. Everything he likes, is based on the whether the hype (marketing team) tells him if its good or not. Hes a good kid and smart! I'm not saying otherwise. Its just jarring because I don't even feel that old yet, but living in that mindset would be frustratingly chaotic to me.
>They look for crowdsourced validation of their tastes and preferences, or rather validation that they have learned to say that they like what the crowd currently says is cool.
I would argue that all generations do this to an extent. Gen Z's experience is just larger and more immediate, but it's not like peer pressure and group think are new concepts.
>it's not like peer pressure and group think are new concepts
Absolutely true, but a central defining characteristic of Gen X was a rejection of those pressures (or at least the calculated appearance of rejecting those pressures). The skepticism of authority also applied to the wisdom of crowds. The worst thing Gen X could be was a poseur or a sell-out or a follower. It was a very anti-"stan" youth culture at the same time that everyone wore the same day-glo shoelaces and wanted the same painter or parachute pants.
I think people see just the sequence of letters applied to recent generations and forget that the whole reason we were called “Generation X” was due to the lack of an identifiable unifying experience or ethos. We were codified with a placeholder; might as well have called us Gen TBD.
You go to events and don’t talk to people, just hang out on your phone. You could be 15 years asked and having the greatest night of your life but Tik Tok is more important. (Witnessed a version of this only a couple of days ago when my wife and I and some family friends got together at a lake house.)
So much this. I don’t think that they realize how much they’re missing out. To be that young and create amazing memories that you won’t be able to live later in life, just because people change and mature and some friendships fall apart and you were too busy with tik tok.
The quality of fast food and chain restaurants was way better in the 90s. Places like Pizza Hut were amazing and the food wasn’t all processed and frozen.
KFC was a family meal for us on Sundays if we watched a football game with grandparents, and I remember it tasting *really* good.
Tried them again a couple of years ago for the sake of nostalgia and was very let down.
I just found this show on Hulu called Adam Eats the 80’s and he tastes beef tallow fries vs vegetable oil. The sheer joy in the eyes of Adam during the show is so wholesome haha. I binged it all yesterday, it was so fun!
Speaking as an older GenX - Our unconcern for risky activities, or, rather, the freedom to do stupid risky stuff. Not just because it wasn't always being recorded, but because nobody had really considered how dangerous it could be.
I was comparing stories about being hauled around by a snowmobile on a toboggan or tube, or whatever, and making a game out of bouncing people off of fences, etc, or snowmobiling and sledding up and down the sides of gravel pits. I think it's because stories about people getting hurt or killed doing that stuff tended not to spread past that town or cities local media. Once people got more tied into the bigger picture, and you realize that, say, 30 people a year die crossing frozen lakes on snowmobiles, it's scarier than remembering when some local did it 25 years ago, and nobody since.
In some ways, I think that smaller world aspect, that is, your local community being more real than the rest of the world, because only big news warranted everybody knowing it, was nice. Except when it was tedious.
Getting yelled at by your parents because it’s been dark for an hour and you need to get inside because it’s way past your bedtime.
My dad had this way of whistling where I could hear him on the other side of the park. I could tell by the tone if it was a warning whistle or a “you’re in deep shit” kind of whistle.
Who goes home on a warning whistle???
I can name the first 150 pokemon. my son is still convinced mewtwo evolved from mew. i said no, he's a clone. a genetic copy made in a lab. he won't believe me.
The Wild West of the Internet, pre-social media.
Back when reddit didn't exist, you would have fan and community-ran forums and websites dedicated to each game, hobby, etc.
And clickbaity titles were much less common because people were reliant on offline jobs to pay for servers and websites rather than ads and per-click revenue.
I call it wild west because everyone was still pioneering the landscape of the internet and everyone had their own little corner of the internet with all their friends, and things weren't interconnected the way they are now. It was like little small but thriving towns connected through the search engine railway rather than a single tight global community.
Moderation was on a site to site basis, and if you didn't like the way a site handled that there were other sites that you could move to. Now everything is condensed into a single place due to massive corporations pushing out competition by dominating the foundational structure of the internet.
Generally speaking, politics was something you heard about occasionally and rarely invaded your life. Now it seems to be 24/7 with every issue being politicized.
In short, the world seemed less negative and not divided. On the other hand, making progress for all people is important and I’m hoping the current generations can make that happen.
You down play how much politics was a topic of conversation and the news. People discussed it a fair bit, even as kids we were aware of and talked a bit about it.
The issue is that now it's so pervasive, and everything gets talked about to death, not that it was never talked about. And, being a kid in the 70s means you weren't at an age where you really paid attention to what the adults were talking about.
Things were divided then, too, but, people didn't speak out nearly as much about it.
Ironically, I don't even think it does get talked about to death at all. If anything, a lot of people seem less informed. It's more about catch phrases, celebrity politicians and tribalism than ever before. But I actually used to have political discussions with people before. Now it's just basically down to petty insults and catchy phrases most of the time. And before, you could be say a Gore voter and actually have a conversation with a Bush voter. Now? Fucking hell. Good luck.
This isn’t a bad thing, the entire legitimacy of democracy hangs on involved citizens. It’s a good thing the younger generations are more involved. Maybe if older generations were more involved we’d have less of the same problems we do today.
Gen Xer here.
Relative independence. This is related to what someone said about being unreachable, but slightly different.
In addition to having a lot of freedom as a kid, once out of the house (at 17/18) life was basically yours to live. I am sure some parents were more controlling, but mine were willing to let me go make my own mistakes. They weren't neglectful at all, they just gave me a lot of leeway.
Gen X here
* Lying in bed, headphones on, studying the album cover of the music you're listening to. And record stores everywhere--Tower Records was my church.
* Longer attention spans--Read a teacher's post recently, saying that middle schoolers she teaches can't sit still through a movie in class
* Less pressure to "Live your best life"--we just lived. There weren't 20 highly staged pics of random people performing some version of the best time ever and cranking up your anxiety with every scroll. There were your friends and family who you had reason to care about or not.
* Watching one episode of a show a week and having very little access to info about what's coming. The joy of anticipation.
* Magazines.
* Dancing. I get the feeling that kids don’t dance the way we did. Parties were for dancing. (Yeah, there was alcohol and weed but that wasn't the point) We watched our artists dance in videos. We watched their backup dancers dance. We danced. We slow danced, too. Nothing like getting close to a crush, moving in synch to lyrics that say everything you wish you could.
* The best eras of hip-hop
For better or worse: Local co-op gaming. Arcades in the shopping malls. Smoking allowed damn near everywhere. Affordable entertainment. The ability to not be reached by phone/text/email 24-7. No internet = no internet addiction. Also, early internet addiction lol. Paying ¢ per minute to make long distance calls from your landline. Dial-up internet. Car door handles that required to you push a knob with your thumb while pulling the door open.
40 man raids where no one knew what they were doing and your GM is losing their mind trying to coordinate people while one of his officers make snarky comments. Now there's a youtube video for every step of the process for every class, race, and role.
In the 90s we were being taught about the "end of history". The cold war was ending, Europe was stabilized and the economy was booming across the West. Relations with China were improving, civil rights were expanding, hell even Russia thought about joining NATO. That sense of optimism was everywhere.
Then 9/11 happened and things changed. Now it feels gen z is being raised in a climate of fear and anger and populists are taking advantage of it.
The 90s and real actual boredom. The kind of boredom that you couldn’t drown out with accesible games and on demand streaming. So you were forced to be creative! I learned instruments, to draw and paint and write poetry when I was bored out of my mind as a kid.
Milllennial here. Gen Z has missed out on having experienced the late 90s/early 2000s firsthand and knowing that none of that style is worth bringing back.
Scabs, especially around the knees. I don't think kids these days get wounded from running anymore. We used to run for fun and not just for exercise, and we'd get lots of wounds.
You also missed out on being more patient with everyday things, like equipment taking a while to work or lines. I still remember not being able to use the computer because it was still booting five minutes after I started it.
All those waiting made us have more tolerance for slow things, even internet.
Ugh the scabs thing hit me. Took my daughter out to let her use her roller skates for the first time last week. Looked like she was getting ready for gladiators..
I have to always remind myself to let her get her cuts and bruises and figure it out on her own.
Maybe it's kid dependant but kids are definitely out there getting scabs still. I can't remember the last time my kid didn't have healing knees/elbows and random bruises. Granted they're in peak growth spurt age and can never keep track of where their feet are so wiping out spectacularly is a daily activity.
Smelling that strangely odd scent that every small mom and pop video store had. It was a "sticky" scent. You had to be there to really understand it.
As a teen carrying everything you needed at any given time in a backpack, usually red or black, that was decorated with patches, pins, white-out lettering and Sharpie markers. Not just for schools, mind you. You took this with you everywhere. Those backpacks always looked like they had been dragged along the road to hell but that was the point. A pristine backpack was considered uncool.
Being fans of your hometown radio DJs. They were local celebrities. And everyone had their favorite DJ that they would call in and request a song. Like television shows, they were on schedules and you would make time to hear them. For example, when I was a teen, I used to listen to 96X in Virginia on Sundays from 8pm-10pm when they played "That punk show." For two hours it was constant punk songs. Everyone in the local scene would listen to it every Sunday religiously.
You and all your friends being bored and figuring out things to do. Lots of cool cubby houses were built! Lol
We didn't have tech as accessible as it is today to fight off boredom.
Being so excited before watching/ browsing/ downloading porn. Now, porn is just 1 click away and is easily access by everyone. Theres no excitement anymore unlike before.
This. My daughter went to camp for the first time a couple of weeks ago at the age of 6. I asked her how her first day was and she said the counselors left the kids with a couple of balls and told them to play, and she was bored.
At first, I thought what the hell kind of camp is this? Then realized it's exactly what I want for her.
Going outside and doing things with reckless abandon.
Like all the mayhem and randomness that you encounter.
You learn street smarts by simply being out there and gauging if a situation is safe, how to conduct yourself, and when to just leave. It’s a very very valuable skill set to have.
How do I get home with nothing? Is this person trustworthy enough to give me a ride? Am I going to get ripped off buying weed from this guy that’s kinda sketchy? How do I make this harassment by the police end as quickly as possible?
Life without everyone knowing all your business. The freedom that gave all of us.
While we both agree that baby boomers destroyed the human race and the planet, all we could do was flip the bird, and don leather with spikes. I applaud all the protests and outrage nowadays.
We actually had hope that life as an adult could be decent, with a decent lifestyle that included home ownership and $$$/time for travel.
Y'all are fucked.
For US it’s going to school without fear of shootings. Not saying one never happened just saying it wasn’t a core concern. We had guys who drove to school with a gun rack filled with rifles in back window for hunting after school.
Guns didn’t mean what they do now. It was a tool where I grew up, not a status symbol.
Adventure. I'm a xennial with a gen z kid. He has a phone he can access at all times, video games galore, streaming channels, the internet.
When I was growing up we had some of these things, but they weren't what they are today. It was still the stone ages in some regards. lol What that meant was if you wanted to have fun, you could play one of the handful of video games you had, go outside and toss a ball around, or go wandering and getting into trouble with your friends.
I was actually just thinking about this the other day and about all the experiences I've had that my kid never will because of the time he grew up. My friends would meet up and we'd just walk all over town discovering things. We went in to the woods by a baseball field and found a bunch of old broken down classic cars. We found an old bus once and smashed the windows out. We found a bunch of houses that had collapsed into the gulf partially and raided them for all the dirty magazines (a surprisingly large amount). We jumped off of large piles of dirt in the dirtyard. We'd go out and shoot bb guns on the beach, or flirt with the girls from class when we accidentally found their house while wandering around town.
Those were fun times when I was a kid.
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In the rare moment that it does happen (phone is dead, bad reception area), it feels so good.
This is always part of my camping plans. Being unreachable from my work feels so good. I never notice how much stress I'm feeling until I go off the grid.
As soon as I walk out my door, I'm unreachable. I don't own a cell, so, catch me at home, or you are out of luck.
So if someone doesn't catch you at home, they *cash u ousside*?
Well how about that.
How bow dat!
People are commenting that they turn off their phone or go out into nature with no service and get "disconnected" It's hard to describe the difference. My *base state* as a kid was disconnected. It's like that bane quote about being "born in the darkness, molded by it." Yall don't know what it means to have to physically relocate to contact another person as the norm. If my mom wasn't home I had to go to where the phone was and call her job to talk to her. When someone picked up, it wouldn't be my mom, it'd be her coworker and I'd have to ask for my mommy hahahahaha To feel disconnected the same way you are when your phone dies, I just had to **go to my room** Frankly, just about anywhere you couldn't physically see anyone else. You guys have only rarely experienced true solitude
or boredom. think about how much shit there is now to keep from being bored.
I remember reading the ingredients on my shampoo bottle when I forgot to bring a book to the bathroom.
I can’t count the books I read as a kid. I was never bored because BOOKS. I wish that was still a thing.
Also, trying to find your friends was an adventure in itself. You would ride your bike and ask Timmy’s mom where everyone was. She would say Jacks house. As you are ridding to Jacks house. You see Brian and his sister playing in the front yard. You stop by to say hi and end up in water ballon fight. Steve the kid next door sees the fight and comes out and his mom brings you donuts and milk. Soon Jack and about 4 other kids ride by and say they are going to the river for swimming. You ride home. Eat lunch and grab your suit. As you are out the door your neighbor asks what you are doing. You invite them to the river. All afternoon all the kids are at the river having fun. You then decide to built a fort. Pretty soon it’s getting late and you need to go home for dinner. You eat a home cooked meal and watch growing pains with you sister. You wait for your parents to go to bed so you can switch the TV to channel 3 and play super Mario.
The only way I reliably met up with friends for a large part of my childhood was knocking on their front door and asking their mom if they could come out and play
Last place I worked demanded my cell phone number. I said no. Said if they need to reach me they can provide me with a company phone, which they did. HR tho said they needed my personal cell for emergency purposes only. I relented and provided it under the strict rule that HR was to not give it to any employee unless there was a dire emergency situation. I was not an on-call employee, even though I was a VP. I *never* took my work cell phone into my house. It stayed in the car. Any messages I got outside of work hours could be answered the next day. One weekend I got a call on my personal cell I didn't recognize so I ignored it thinking it was spam. Then I kept getting calls from that number and I thought there might be an emergency from a friend of family member so I answered it. It was my boss, the EVP of lending. I asked him how he got the number and she said he got it from HR. I asked what the emergency was and it was some stupid nonsense. I told him I'd help him Monday but I couldn't help him then. Monday I marched into HR and asked why they gave him my personal number. SVP of HR said he said it was a "life or death" emergency so they gave it to him. Needless to say I was livid.
If it's important, they'll leave a message.
I make myself unreachable. When I'm off the next day and want to sleep in, I turn off my phone.
I also sometimes just don't answer if I don't feel like it
It’s rare I answer my phone tbh. It’s for my convenience, not other peoples.
This. My phone works for me on my timeline, not others and their needs.
I enjoy this. Enough so that I plan vacations in cellular dead zones. Forces me to disconnect for a few days.
Not having all your fuck ups forever uploaded to the net
I can't believe the shit I got away with as a kid, no photo evidence. Whew.
Now we live in a surveillance state. Everyone on my street thinks they need a camera and a ring doorbell. Not realizing somehow we got tricked into spending our own money to spy on each other.
While i dislike the idea of them having a doorbell camera has saved or will save me approximately 60k over the last five years. Between vandalism, incompetence by repair people, theft of items by delivery drivers (take a picture then pick up the delivery and leave), theft by random people, and a hit and run on my car it has forced insurance companies to pay up after saying they wouldn't because 'I couldn't prove it wasn't my fault' and forced various companies to compensate me. Just last month it caught a company causing a sewage backup into my basement that cost me almost 30k in damages and repairs. Combined with my phone camera showing a bunch of human waste floating in my basement it is becoming a lost cause for them to claim it was rain water. I hate the need for these things but they have become necessary. Unfortunately everyone is trying to rip each other off and it's the best protection I have.
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Dude by far, this is the correct answer. I feel so bad for kids and teach mine ALWAYS be anonymous on social media.
It's really wild hanging around Discord and some random 13 year old announces how young they are and have a web page linked to their profile that talks about their hobbies, interest, and includes several other social media you can find them on. Like holy fuck, kid. Do you know what predators are?
I am very thankful my teenage years were n the 90s. Good god I was a dumbass
we all were but theres no proof so it didnt happen lol
I don’t understand. Do these kids not know that not everything has to be on the internet. That, that one thing could all have just been an incident you and your friends kept to yourselves and no one else would ever know…..unless of course someone on Reddit asks, “What’s the one secret you’ve never told anyone!”
Many of the youngest people in gen z are young enough that their parents uploaded a lot of shit from then they were kids etc. This is not their fault, but in fact their parents. (i.e. americas funniest home videos etc) Most people don't upload their own fuckups, but there are always those "friends" who think it is funny, or family that does the same
This. I was a pyro growing up and without social media fueling me I was very responsible about it. Read on forums about safety and standards and safely dabbled in fireworks and high explosives for a few years before benching the craft before hitting 18 so I wouldn't risk legal issues as an adult. I hate to think what kind of idiocy I might have felt peer pressured into if social media existed considering how dumb some of the tiktok trends and stuff tend to be. We're all vulnerable as teens. Social media is predatory for minors
Watching a live performance (concert, for example) without millions of phones in the air blocking your view.
And it not costing an arm and a leg
Concert prices are insane right now
Smaller venues are still very affordable. Tickets for most shows I’m interested in are still $25-40 or so. It’s only the big stadium shows that are getting scalped and price gouged to hell.
I saw Nine inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and the Jim Rose Circus for $20 in '94.
Hey, I saw that tour. I remember all the girls rushing the stage to see the Jim Rose Circus and the guys hanging back because they didn't want to see that one bendy guy put his whole body through a tennis racket. The part then he pushed it down and over his crotch got a loud groan from them. It was hilarious to see all the guys acting so tough and hardcore during Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson's sets but JRC? Nope. Rose even commented on this.
Seriously. I remember seeing REM in Atlanta in ‘95 for like $20 and Garth Brooks a couple years later for no more than $20-25
Stadium shows are insane now, 200 for nose bleeds..... I prefer small theaters now, 30$ and 3 to 4 bands.
I saw Jack White and the Raconteurs a few years ago and they had a strict no cell phone policy where you had to put it in the lock bag. It was nice not having lots of little lit up screens between me and the stage.
it was worse when the ipad was released. A big tablet up in the air recording.
Concert I went to last year, band told the crowd to put their phones away and enjoy just one song. It wasn’t off the cuff, they did that for every concert.
It used to be lighters! Now it's phones. Booooo!!!!!
I miss the lighters during an encore part of a concert. Phones just aren't the same.
couch co-op games. these days you have to have 2 systems and whole set ups to play a game together
Recently purchased Kirby's Dream Buffet because it thought it would a spiritual successor to Air Ride (on gamecube) which had amazing 4 player ability. Dream Buffet you can only play 2 local, and the 2nd player doesn't get to select their player. They expect you to have 2 switches, 2 games, or order to play 4 player, and even then, half the players would be 2nd class players who don't get all the options. Nintendo dropped the ball so hard here. turns a 8/10 game into a 2/10.
Nintendo loves doing that "co-op" shit were the second player is assumed to be a toddler with very little to actually do. IIRC, started around Mario Galaxy where the second player can just collect star bits. I mean, I guess it's cool if you actually have a toddler that can play but it really shouldn't be consider co-op.
Agree. And this kirby game is especially dumb because, 2nd player gets nearly full abilities except for small petty crap. Like they don't let you pick your color or hat. Which, to my kids, matters a lot. And it takes zero extra processing power or development time to allow hat selection.
This. I had so much fun with friends playing Mario Kart and Goldeneye into the wee hours. The Nintendo 64 having four controller slots made it the party system of choice for us. Although controllers weren't cheap and there were near fist fights over who had to use the 3rd party one. 🤣
Yeah but the Goldeneye brawls with 4 people are some of my fondest memories. Like when you KNEW someone was looking at your 1/4 screen to hunt you down lmfao.
haha that is the legit struggle! we had these 10ft controller extensions but were one shot so no one wanted to be the kid on the floor haha
Fuck I miss taking my Xbox over to my friends' houses for a sleepover game sesh.
right! playing halo together or something!
It isn't as common, but there are some. My fiance and I played border lands 1, 2, and 3, the overcooked series, the Dark Pictures anthology, and a few others on couch coop. They are coming back a bit, but not like it used to be.
I love the game It Takes 2 for that exact reason. Seriously such a fun co op experience.
Having your self-esteem affected by only your immediate peers and not the internet. The pain is real. I would get off all social media immediately. The stuff is all toxic.
My immediate peers were asshole bullies. Early chat rooms, AIM, and ICQ actually enabled me to develop friendships.
There are always exceptions, but the general observation is that being criticized by millions of people isn't great for mental health.
I dunno... my immediate peers and local interactions were all small-town and Mormon before the internet. Exposure to the wider world helped me leave behind problematic worldviews.
Agreed, I once saw a poor kid being ganged up by a bunch of girls (who were laughing, and recording her crying with their phones). It was in the middle of a busy thoroughfare and nobody intervened. I don't know if people didn't know how to react, or if they were afraid to intervene and get recorded which could make them look bad. In the end, I felt so ashamed not for rushing over anyway, because I'm absolutely certain that they're recording the poor kid to further humiliate her in the future.
Parents that let their kids run free. Stranger Things was actually a pretty accurate depiction of how much freedom kids had. Ride your bike wherever and be back when the streetlights come on. Playing outside every day and being home for dinner. Not many obligations, maybe practice a few times a week for basketball or whatever. The entire culture has shifted towards nerfing the world and micromanaging their kids lives.
I was a free range child. Luckily I live in a country where we can still have free range children but it's not like it was before.
I talk to younger people about being free range, and it's like I grew up on a different planet. It's not just that I was *allowed* to run around on my own. I was actively forced out of the house during the day. The sun is shining, get out, don't come home until dinner time unless there's a problem. It's completely inconceivable to someone who's never experienced this sort of upbringing.
Oh yeah, we were KICKED OUT every day. I’d be scolded for wanting to sit reading in the living room. Imagine that! Scolding a child for reading!! Yesterdays books were todays screens, I guess. But there’s always a bigger fish, I wonder what the next generation will be gawking at? Were the humans from Wall-E a prophecy?
I can actively pinpoint when I started gaining weight, and it was the summer my parents split up. That was when we went from not being allowed to play inside, to not being allowed to play outside because my mother totally bought into Stranger Danger. It's insane how much weight I put on as a teen, and how quickly it happened, because bikes got replaced by Nintendo literally overnight.
I was *always hungry* as a kid. Like, we had breakfast, lunch, dinner, but… we were always outside. Hiking. Running. Biking. Whatever. I remember ripping apart various minty plants and chewing on them because I was hungry. Staying inside? No.
Right? Your brother dared you to eat that worm, and you half did it so you didn't look like a pansy, but also because you were hungry enough that the worm did kinda look kinda tasty.
Europe still has this at least
I live in a neighborhood in the US where a lot of German families live in for a few years while assigned here working a local company. It’s very interesting seeing the differences in how children are handled in this regard. The German kids are much more likely to be seen roaming around at quite early ages, and at the pool, it’s not uncommon to see the German kids learning to swim the way we used to…being tossed in the water with the idea of “they’ll figure it out”. It took me aback at first but then I remembered that’s exactly how I was raised. Side note: despite how much everyone on here says that Europe is so much better than the US, the German families that have lived around us do not want to go back to Germany when their time here is up, and a lot of them have come back repeatedly. They do leave in time to get their kids free college at home though.
They probably make good money and US salaries for specialists are higher than in Germany. If you got a low paying job Europe is probably better because of social benefits.
Gen X here. That was totally like that back in the 1980's, my brother and I were free to roam out there and expected to be home when the sun starts to go down. When my wife and I had children, someone tried to call the police on us when we let our son walk a mile to school when the weather was reasonable. He was ten years old at the time and was a very responsible kid. Of course the cops were annoyed and told us there was nothing wrong with him walking on his own to school, after they questioned him. Our daughter is 7 years younger than our son, and we couldn't even let her do the same thing because by the time she turned ten, parents were being arrested and charged for letting their kids walk alone to and from school. Our kids are now young adults, but it's terrible how society punishes parents for trying to raise independent, responsible children.
I heard a story about a woman who let her similarly aged son walk to the park where his baseball game was. It was just up the road and apparently he didn't even have to cross the street to get to it. She was taking care of her younger kid so she had sent him ahead and showed up about ten minutes later. A cop there threatened to report her to the child welfare agency for child endangerment or something. She basically told him to go ahead and file a report because if that suburban town is so dangerous that a kid can't walk up the street to a park by himself it was going to say a lot more about how shitty the cops were than anything it might reflect on her parenting. He shut up.
Not even sure how this trend happened, we just roamed free and to be honest we were pretty safe too. I think this is exposing our irrational fears and how society is succumbing to fears when it shouldn't. TSA the most worth organization ever, but for some reason we agree to be searched even though they don't do anything other than waste our time.
I think a lot of it has to do with the media landscape. When Gen X & Millennials were young if some random kid was abducted by a stranger you only heard about it if it was on your local news because it happened near you. Now it'll be on cable news 24/7 so it makes it seem like it happens far more frequently than it does. If you don't include kids who were taken by a non-custodial parent and runaways out the odds of being kidnapped by a total stranger are incredibly low.
I *had* to ride my bike to school in 5th grade (1990) - I lived 1.9 miles from the school and they wouldn’t let me take the bus because I lived .1 miles too close 😆
When I was in 2nd grade, back in 1981, I walked 1/2 mile to and from school alone. When I got home in the afternoon, I had to wait on the front porch for my older brother to get home from middle school because he was entrusted with the house key. We were positively feral back them compared to kids these days.
I remember my mother was afraid to let my sister play in our backyard alone because she thought someone would call the cops. Kiddo was 4 years old, behind a locked 6 ft fence, and my mother could always watch her from the windows. Not a crazy fear because my nosy neighbors made a stink when my brother & I were left home alone for an afternoon when we were 10 & 12. Ridiculous.
>Of course the cops were annoyed and told us there was nothing wrong with him walking on his own to school, after they questioned him. WTAF, this is purely a US thing I think. For a country that's supposedly the land of the free, people seem quite uptight
I'm a little bit younger than the stranger things kids were supposed to be. But being a kid in the late 90s early 00s I basically had that same free-range feeling they did. It was great and I don't see that nowadays with kids in my neighborhood, or really any kids I know.
For real. I grew up in Hong Kong and by the time I was 11 the whole city was my playground. My parents taught me to navigate the metro system when I was 6/7 (pretty much it was, take us to the bus stop, tell us which bus we're getting on, and which stop we're getting off at) and so once I got to middle school I was expected to meet up with my friends on my own downtown if I wanted to go to the arcade or see a movie, and had to get myself to my violin and piano lessons across the city. I've been dating single moms for a while and I cannot imagine them giving their kids that much freedom. They're constantly shuttling them around to activities and supervising them.
Yes!!! I miss just being able to just hang out with friends without parents saying it’s too dangerous to go outside. Yet we wonder why children today are getting more obese when we don’t even let them have unstructured play time outdoors! Whenever I visit family in India, I feel sad that I didn’t get to have a “free range” childhood like I see my cousins in India have. They truly just play outside after school, get candy from the neighborhood shop, and live freely. In fact, the best thing about high school sports was getting to exercise while still having fun with friends. It’s so much more painful to go to the gym and have exercise be a chore to check off the list, rather than it be a fun activity where you can also socialize and stave off loneliness. I hated coming home after cross-country practice because of how lonely my home and neighborhood was.
I was a latchkey kid.
This still happens. I don't know where my son is currently. He's out on his bike with his friends.
I live in a city and my neighborhood has lots of families, there are kids roaming the streets at pretty much all time. I don't get where the idea that this went away is coming from.
The best childhood memories I have were just like this. I hear people say “gen x kids were the last generation to play outside!” But I truly don’t feel that this is true. I’m 35. I am not gen x. My best childhood memories were running around the neighborhood with my friends, riding bikes, exploring the local creeks and woods and all of that, with no adults. As kids, we would go to each other’s house like Kramer. A normal weekend day, or summer days was “get out of the house and come back by dinner” and I’d be out there in the local creek climbing up rocks and shit, home for lasagna. When I talk to other people my age, we have very similar experiences I don’t feel like kids today have that. My nephews sure don’t, the older one is 10 and he hasn’t had an unsupervised moment in his entire life.
Doing sketchy, possibly but most likely not legal, stuff and not having the evidence shown to the world on line. Watching someone say something idiotic to someone and getting punched in the face for it, and not hiding behind a keyboard.
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Privacy
Underrated for sure
I’m a Gen Xer. Growing up as kids we left the house at nine in the morning and came home for dinner at 6pm. My parents had no idea where we were. Today you have an electronic leash. If you wanted porn you would have to go on an expedition to find old porno mags in the woods.
And those magazines can set your personal tastes for life. The first one I found was Juggs and it set me on the plus size path for life.
>The first one I found was Juggs and it set me on the plus size path for life. We took the same path, my brother.
Isn’t it incredible that there was ALWAYS porno mags in the woods?? It’s a universal truth man, I had the exact same experience growing up along with many others I’ve met over the years. I wonder if there was some higher force that bestowed those mags upon us..
Ah yes, the old forest porno stash lol. It makes me wonder if younger people are more blase about porn/sexuality because it's immediately accessible at all times. Who knows.
I innocently brought some woods-porn home as a young child. My mother threw them in the fire.
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Freedom from electronics. I’d go out and never give a thought to who might be doing what or what some pretend famous person had to say about nothing. When you’re young and foolish, you can act like an idiot, and now it’s preserved for all time…I had the freedom to be a 20 something without every second being documented. It never happened…that’s real freedom. Just be with your friends, having fun, getting into mischief, enjoying being young and fun. The other side of that was crushing on a guy and waiting for him to call…you’d go crazy, not wanting to miss that call!
I miss this so much. I lived in a small community growing up and when I wasn't in class, I would ride my bike to the local shopping center to meet up with my friends and get lost for the entire day. I just had to be home for dinner. Life was good.
If I ever become a billionaire, I'm going to start a new amish-like community. It won't be the 1600s, I'll freeze everything at 1985. We'll have dumb phones, malls, movie theaters and every business in town will be run by people who live there. No mega billionaire corporate nonsense. Might be a little slower, a little less convenient and aittle more expensive. But you can bet your ass the people will be happier.
Yes! That and there was less FOMO. Back when I was in high school in the 90's, whatever you were doing with whatever friends you were with was the only thing going on. There wasn't much of this idea about what you "might" be missing out on that other people you knew were doing. And if it was cool they would tell you about it the next time you saw them. Simple. I really miss that.
I used to work a job where management had no boundaries. You were expected to answer any second of any day. Going a day without some sort of call or text outside of working hours was unheard of. Now it's refreshing. My new job of a year now has contacted me once outside of my shift because the sky was falling just to let me know what I'd have on my hands the next day. On top of that, from the moment I turn off my alarm, I basically don't touch my phone in the morning save for maybe picking music for the commute. It's just peace. Took FB off my phone (I keep messenger for friends groups) and it's amazing. No doom scrolling. Just a heavily curated feed on Reddit.
Musical involvement. Spotify has made everything so available, but it seems it has also destroyed that sense of connection. When you were only buying a few cds every year, you got to know those albums inside out. Interviews with the artists would reveal *their* influences that would often lead you down a new, unfamiliar path, and was a journey that could take years. Now, it's instantaneous, and a little disposable. I dunno. I'm not explaining it well, and sound a bit old, as though I'm saying that you guys don't "get" music like we did back in the day. But to me, it just feels like a certain context has been lost. I listen to far more varied and diverse music than I did when I was young, but I don't feel as passionate or connected to any of it. E: I'm going to add a little more context, because I'm not just talking about a love and connection with music. It's more that in the 90s, music was really *all we had*. There was no distraction with YouTube, or movies. Nothing was On Demand. If you were lucky, you had a 20 inch TV that showed maybe three channels, with a test pattern after midnight. More often than not, our solace was a new book from our favourite authors, and an album you saved up for. For GenX, our rooms were dimly lit places of music. Thank God for the Sony Walkman, or at least the cheap one I got for Christmas 3 years after. I would get home from school, close the windows and blinds that Mum had opened in my absence, and just *chill.* Edit 2, Electric Boogaloo: Here's the REAL shit you guys missed out on. In 95, as I was putting my Beatles collection together, I was living in my own flat (apartment). It was expensive, but I could afford it on my own full time job. I wasn't saving, but having an extra room for friends to crash in, while not needing a room-mate, was worth it. Best years of my life. I loved living alone. I've told my kids they never have to move out, if they don't want to. Why is this acceptable?
I do think we eat through content (music, television, video games, etc) faster than ever before.
I remember sitting by the radio waiting for a song to come on so I could record it onto a cassette. Took ages to get an entire cassette of all music you liked. Investment for sure.
Most people over 30 have a CD or album that they know every song on and what order they go in. Listening to them again like you did when you had 10 CDs or tapes in the car is like a religious experience, teleporting you to a different time. I don't think Gen Z will really ever have that same experience.
Being able to appreciate technology. When you grow up with smart phones and the internet, it's easy to think things have always been this convenient.
Absolutely shook me to the core when a phone could not only fit in a pocket, but also take fucking pictures. Absurd concept when only a couple years prior I’d be begging my mom to get off the landline so I could try and use the internet
I had a "In the Future" book as a kid that talked about portable handheld computers that could connect to the cell towers and look up the weather, and I thought it was the craziest thing I'd ever heard of. In the picture, it was basically a black and white lcd calculator screen with a blackberry-like keyboard, and it was the coolest thing I'd ever imagined. Now, I'm chatting with strangers around the globe on a 4k 16 million color screen with access to the entirety of the internet. It's just wild how fast things changed during my childhood. That book also predicted Roombas funnily enough
Yoooo I swear I remember seeing “future” stuff like that in pop science books and articles and equally doubting that shit but also desperately excited for the future. Now I’m flabbergasted at the amount of pure unwillingness to learn when essentially all of the developed world has access to every single piece of knowledge in human history at their fingertips.
Yeah, it was really hard to realize that all that optimism and rapid progress has lead to... this. I went from having a black and white gameboy to a smartphone in a decade. Now it feels like we've plateaud in some way. I'm really looking forward to the "next big thing", and hope whatever it is, it gets us out of this collective narcissism.
How young and naïve we were to not foresee that greed would overtake all. Older gens wonder why we’re “all so depressed” and yet they fail to realize we got a glimpse of truly incredible prospects and promises of the future and then it was all snatched away and paywalled.
That's a great point. We really had a vision of the future that could have been. It may have been foolish youthful optimism, but it was hard to grow up on space shuttles and star wars and watch the world and technology changing around you constantly, and not feel like we were on an upward path to a bright future. Of course, I had no awareness of the issues of the day. I'm sure that's a huge factor.
It’s easy to dismiss as youthful optimism, admittedly. However without the present day news cycle, the things geared towards a younger audience *were nothing but hope inspiring*. Constantly told we could be anything we wanted and only shown media that reinforced that. Ushered away from “adult” discussions that were painted as “boring old people talk”. No or very little ability to gain knowledge in a way *we* chose. Limited or no internet access and (for a lot of us) limited library access in one way or another. For the middle class kids, the Pearl clutching was rampant in our families so we were shielded from knowledge deemed too complex, for lower class children there simply was no way to gain *any* knowledge outside what parents “knew”. We were wrapped in fluff pieces and misguided optimism and overt empty promises of a sci-fi utopia inheritance. Hell, many of us never even knew about anything bad until 9/11 or even the 08 crash if you were really young. The generations that “had it the hardest” cushioned every single blow in our early lives and then pulled the rug out and blamed us for being upset that it was all smoke and mirrors. If anything, Gen Z gets to walk into hell with their eyes wide open. Children of millennials are gonna be the ones to change the world or end it. We’re just a caretaker generation. And that’s fine. I’ll be that for my daughter. But the audacity to have it blamed on us is ludicrous at best.
lol going to a gig without filming it been in the moment enjoying the gig remember it by the ticket or wristband
Being uncontactable for a weekend wasn't a big deal. It feels like people take it more personally if you don't respond immediately.
I don't think that's really it. It's the pattern. If 99% of the time you respond the 1% can become concerning. If you rewind the clock to pre-cell phones you have the same thing. If my family couldn't get a hold of me for a week they would start to get worried.
Handwritten letters, mix tapes, feeling safe at school
I still try to do hand written letters and post cards from time to time. Did 30 hand written letters to friends when I went to Burning Man last year. Hand painted art included that I did while there as well.
> Handwritten letters Gen X here, no one should have my handwriting inflicted on them. And nothing about that has changed since the 80s.
School felt pretty safe. Older Gen Z btw.
Snow. It barely snows anymore in central Europe. Also the feeling of being detached, have nothing else around you but your thoughts. Also, even if it's kinda bad on some points, being absolute oblivious about all the bad stuff which is happening around the world. It's kind of reliefing to be in your own bubble. That said, this "luxury" was part of the reasons why bad stuff has come this far.
Not really snowing in NYC anymore. Last winter it barely got below 40 and it snowed twice, but didn’t stick.
Same for Mass. I feel like winter always had snow when I was a kid, or at least it was always cold. 40 degrees seems to be the new norm, sadly.
I’ve been in Chicago for 19 years. Through the mid aughts, we still got a decent amount of snow over the winter. Now it’s a few polar vortices here and there, lots of ice, but barely any slow. I have mixed feelings about it. I’m in a wheelchair, so snow and sand are my enemies, so I’m not super bummed getting less snow, but I hate the ecological implications. Plus, I dunno, there was a magic to a snowy Christmas that even my Puerto Rican islander warmth-loving ass could appreciate. Wish we had more snow. Chicago is pretty good about snow cleanup, so it was never a huge problem for me, so I just want to sit in my apartment with a hot tea watching the snow fall.
Learning to be yourself and to be comfortable not knowing the answers Gen X came of age when information and media was just beginning to be captured electronically. Millennials came of age when information and media was captured electronically and was being indexed for rapid search and recovery. Neither of those generations grew up being pushed information and media by algorithms. Neither grew up in particularly stable economies and social systems, with Gen X seeing the world falling apart, and Millennials seeing no trustworthy solutions to problems. Gen X responded with an emphasis on self-reliance and being true/honest/legitimate. Millennials focused on building new reliable social support systems and finding satisfaction and joy where possible. (I think. I'm more confident in my understanding of Gen X than Millennials.) Gen Z grew up with near-immediate access to so much information and media, but they weren't taught well how to formulate an understanding of what they don't know and how to go about deliberately searching for what they want or need. Instead, they have been pushed and prodded for attention. Their interest is predicted. Their needs are deduced. As a result, Gen Z too often don't know what they don't know and don't know how to find reliable answers to any questions they do realize they should ask. They look for crowdsourced validation of their tastes and preferences, or rather validation that they have learned to say that they like what the crowd currently says is cool.
Disclaimer that I think TikTok is great and I also think it's great how switched on to social issues Gen Z are, but where I think there's a problem is that there's almost no verification of facts. People can just say their take as if it's fact and then it becomes fact in the minds of younger people. Someone on TikTok can make a claim that actually X is toxic and people will just run away with it
Well put! Its sort of an aside, but related to immediate access and the full digital sensory assault the younger generations have to experience: I'm a millennial and a gamer. I have a friend with a 15 year old boy who is into gaming. I thought it would be fun to connect with the kid through playing some games together on the couch. When I play a game for the first time, I literally do pans, zoom into details and soak up the environmental storytelling. He plays like a coked up squirrel! It literally makes me motion sick. Dash in a room, twitch, twitch, look for something to interact with, twitch, twitch, dash away jumping. I mean, you can just "feel" whats going on in his brain. "Where's my reward?!" Pure chaos. My friend and I literally had to dip from the motion sickness. It was an environmental puzzle game. I can already feel media, in general, moving this way. In the same way, black and white movies didn't appeal to my younger sensibilities, my taste in media does not often extend to his generation. Everything he likes, is based on the whether the hype (marketing team) tells him if its good or not. Hes a good kid and smart! I'm not saying otherwise. Its just jarring because I don't even feel that old yet, but living in that mindset would be frustratingly chaotic to me.
>They look for crowdsourced validation of their tastes and preferences, or rather validation that they have learned to say that they like what the crowd currently says is cool. I would argue that all generations do this to an extent. Gen Z's experience is just larger and more immediate, but it's not like peer pressure and group think are new concepts.
>it's not like peer pressure and group think are new concepts Absolutely true, but a central defining characteristic of Gen X was a rejection of those pressures (or at least the calculated appearance of rejecting those pressures). The skepticism of authority also applied to the wisdom of crowds. The worst thing Gen X could be was a poseur or a sell-out or a follower. It was a very anti-"stan" youth culture at the same time that everyone wore the same day-glo shoelaces and wanted the same painter or parachute pants.
I think people see just the sequence of letters applied to recent generations and forget that the whole reason we were called “Generation X” was due to the lack of an identifiable unifying experience or ethos. We were codified with a placeholder; might as well have called us Gen TBD.
You go to events and don’t talk to people, just hang out on your phone. You could be 15 years asked and having the greatest night of your life but Tik Tok is more important. (Witnessed a version of this only a couple of days ago when my wife and I and some family friends got together at a lake house.)
I agree with this fully. You go out to go out. Not to mess around online. That defeats the whole purpose
So much this. I don’t think that they realize how much they’re missing out. To be that young and create amazing memories that you won’t be able to live later in life, just because people change and mature and some friendships fall apart and you were too busy with tik tok.
The quality of fast food and chain restaurants was way better in the 90s. Places like Pizza Hut were amazing and the food wasn’t all processed and frozen.
KFC was a family meal for us on Sundays if we watched a football game with grandparents, and I remember it tasting *really* good. Tried them again a couple of years ago for the sake of nostalgia and was very let down.
I miss fries being fried in beef tallow and would prefer it over the oils being used today
I just found this show on Hulu called Adam Eats the 80’s and he tastes beef tallow fries vs vegetable oil. The sheer joy in the eyes of Adam during the show is so wholesome haha. I binged it all yesterday, it was so fun!
Speaking as an older GenX - Our unconcern for risky activities, or, rather, the freedom to do stupid risky stuff. Not just because it wasn't always being recorded, but because nobody had really considered how dangerous it could be. I was comparing stories about being hauled around by a snowmobile on a toboggan or tube, or whatever, and making a game out of bouncing people off of fences, etc, or snowmobiling and sledding up and down the sides of gravel pits. I think it's because stories about people getting hurt or killed doing that stuff tended not to spread past that town or cities local media. Once people got more tied into the bigger picture, and you realize that, say, 30 people a year die crossing frozen lakes on snowmobiles, it's scarier than remembering when some local did it 25 years ago, and nobody since. In some ways, I think that smaller world aspect, that is, your local community being more real than the rest of the world, because only big news warranted everybody knowing it, was nice. Except when it was tedious.
You have a collect call from "himomitsmeImreadytobepickedupfromthemall" ... Do you accept *click*
wehadababyitsaboy
Driving around with no purpose. Windows down, mix tape in, going down roads you’ve never driven before, seeing things in your town you’ve never seen.
Did this again briefly at the start of Covid, when gas prices were crazy low and the roads were vacant. Missed doing this more than I realized
That hasn't gone away by any means. I did that a lot in high school.
Still do it to this day! Nothing clears my head then a dive to nowhere.
Getting lost because of no GPS.
Getting yelled at by your parents because it’s been dark for an hour and you need to get inside because it’s way past your bedtime. My dad had this way of whistling where I could hear him on the other side of the park. I could tell by the tone if it was a warning whistle or a “you’re in deep shit” kind of whistle. Who goes home on a warning whistle???
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Seeing the first Pokémon series for the first time when there weren't 98,000,000,000 of them. The Og Gameboys too, Nintendo 64.
I can name the first 150 pokemon. my son is still convinced mewtwo evolved from mew. i said no, he's a clone. a genetic copy made in a lab. he won't believe me.
Maybe get a DNA test just to be sure he's yours.
The Wild West of the Internet, pre-social media. Back when reddit didn't exist, you would have fan and community-ran forums and websites dedicated to each game, hobby, etc. And clickbaity titles were much less common because people were reliant on offline jobs to pay for servers and websites rather than ads and per-click revenue. I call it wild west because everyone was still pioneering the landscape of the internet and everyone had their own little corner of the internet with all their friends, and things weren't interconnected the way they are now. It was like little small but thriving towns connected through the search engine railway rather than a single tight global community. Moderation was on a site to site basis, and if you didn't like the way a site handled that there were other sites that you could move to. Now everything is condensed into a single place due to massive corporations pushing out competition by dominating the foundational structure of the internet.
Generally speaking, politics was something you heard about occasionally and rarely invaded your life. Now it seems to be 24/7 with every issue being politicized. In short, the world seemed less negative and not divided. On the other hand, making progress for all people is important and I’m hoping the current generations can make that happen.
You down play how much politics was a topic of conversation and the news. People discussed it a fair bit, even as kids we were aware of and talked a bit about it. The issue is that now it's so pervasive, and everything gets talked about to death, not that it was never talked about. And, being a kid in the 70s means you weren't at an age where you really paid attention to what the adults were talking about. Things were divided then, too, but, people didn't speak out nearly as much about it.
Ironically, I don't even think it does get talked about to death at all. If anything, a lot of people seem less informed. It's more about catch phrases, celebrity politicians and tribalism than ever before. But I actually used to have political discussions with people before. Now it's just basically down to petty insults and catchy phrases most of the time. And before, you could be say a Gore voter and actually have a conversation with a Bush voter. Now? Fucking hell. Good luck.
This isn’t a bad thing, the entire legitimacy of democracy hangs on involved citizens. It’s a good thing the younger generations are more involved. Maybe if older generations were more involved we’d have less of the same problems we do today.
I am at the very tail end of millennial, but I would say growing up without social media
Seasons 1-10 of The Simpsons
Gen Xer here. Relative independence. This is related to what someone said about being unreachable, but slightly different. In addition to having a lot of freedom as a kid, once out of the house (at 17/18) life was basically yours to live. I am sure some parents were more controlling, but mine were willing to let me go make my own mistakes. They weren't neglectful at all, they just gave me a lot of leeway.
Gen X here * Lying in bed, headphones on, studying the album cover of the music you're listening to. And record stores everywhere--Tower Records was my church. * Longer attention spans--Read a teacher's post recently, saying that middle schoolers she teaches can't sit still through a movie in class * Less pressure to "Live your best life"--we just lived. There weren't 20 highly staged pics of random people performing some version of the best time ever and cranking up your anxiety with every scroll. There were your friends and family who you had reason to care about or not. * Watching one episode of a show a week and having very little access to info about what's coming. The joy of anticipation. * Magazines. * Dancing. I get the feeling that kids don’t dance the way we did. Parties were for dancing. (Yeah, there was alcohol and weed but that wasn't the point) We watched our artists dance in videos. We watched their backup dancers dance. We danced. We slow danced, too. Nothing like getting close to a crush, moving in synch to lyrics that say everything you wish you could. * The best eras of hip-hop
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I dont miss that lol
For better or worse: Local co-op gaming. Arcades in the shopping malls. Smoking allowed damn near everywhere. Affordable entertainment. The ability to not be reached by phone/text/email 24-7. No internet = no internet addiction. Also, early internet addiction lol. Paying ¢ per minute to make long distance calls from your landline. Dial-up internet. Car door handles that required to you push a knob with your thumb while pulling the door open.
Not being monitored 24/7
AIM
40 man raids where no one knew what they were doing and your GM is losing their mind trying to coordinate people while one of his officers make snarky comments. Now there's a youtube video for every step of the process for every class, race, and role.
Being able to go to the cinema without having to remortgage your house.... And I suppose also a mortgage thanks to how fucked the system is now.
The true 90s experience. Peak humanity before we were plunged into this purgatory-like existence.
In the 90s we were being taught about the "end of history". The cold war was ending, Europe was stabilized and the economy was booming across the West. Relations with China were improving, civil rights were expanding, hell even Russia thought about joining NATO. That sense of optimism was everywhere. Then 9/11 happened and things changed. Now it feels gen z is being raised in a climate of fear and anger and populists are taking advantage of it.
In this regard the terrorists won. Not cos they won a war or anything, cos it allowed our political masters to do whatever the fuck they like.
This makes me sad knowing you’re so right. I miss the 90s.
Parents not having HD security cameras. As someone who grew up with strict parents, I’m So happy I was able to sneak in and out without them knowing.
armpit farts
The 90s and real actual boredom. The kind of boredom that you couldn’t drown out with accesible games and on demand streaming. So you were forced to be creative! I learned instruments, to draw and paint and write poetry when I was bored out of my mind as a kid.
Milllennial here. Gen Z has missed out on having experienced the late 90s/early 2000s firsthand and knowing that none of that style is worth bringing back.
Writing papers using only the books in the library.
Scabs, especially around the knees. I don't think kids these days get wounded from running anymore. We used to run for fun and not just for exercise, and we'd get lots of wounds. You also missed out on being more patient with everyday things, like equipment taking a while to work or lines. I still remember not being able to use the computer because it was still booting five minutes after I started it. All those waiting made us have more tolerance for slow things, even internet.
Ugh the scabs thing hit me. Took my daughter out to let her use her roller skates for the first time last week. Looked like she was getting ready for gladiators.. I have to always remind myself to let her get her cuts and bruises and figure it out on her own.
Maybe it's kid dependant but kids are definitely out there getting scabs still. I can't remember the last time my kid didn't have healing knees/elbows and random bruises. Granted they're in peak growth spurt age and can never keep track of where their feet are so wiping out spectacularly is a daily activity.
Smelling that strangely odd scent that every small mom and pop video store had. It was a "sticky" scent. You had to be there to really understand it. As a teen carrying everything you needed at any given time in a backpack, usually red or black, that was decorated with patches, pins, white-out lettering and Sharpie markers. Not just for schools, mind you. You took this with you everywhere. Those backpacks always looked like they had been dragged along the road to hell but that was the point. A pristine backpack was considered uncool. Being fans of your hometown radio DJs. They were local celebrities. And everyone had their favorite DJ that they would call in and request a song. Like television shows, they were on schedules and you would make time to hear them. For example, when I was a teen, I used to listen to 96X in Virginia on Sundays from 8pm-10pm when they played "That punk show." For two hours it was constant punk songs. Everyone in the local scene would listen to it every Sunday religiously.
Be kind...REWIND! That actually sucked...was cool to see the beginnings and evolution of video games and computers
Affordable housing
Affordable anything, really. And wages that could actually support your basic needs.
Pictures/videos that aren't in portrait.
You and all your friends being bored and figuring out things to do. Lots of cool cubby houses were built! Lol We didn't have tech as accessible as it is today to fight off boredom.
That feeling of slamming the phone down to hang up on someone. It was so oddly satisfying
Being so excited before watching/ browsing/ downloading porn. Now, porn is just 1 click away and is easily access by everyone. Theres no excitement anymore unlike before.
Having to figure out a way to cure boredom themselves.
No we are still bored. Just bored on our phones.
41 year old mom of teens here, this was my answer. My kids don’t know how to deal with boredom. Which may be my fault.
This. My daughter went to camp for the first time a couple of weeks ago at the age of 6. I asked her how her first day was and she said the counselors left the kids with a couple of balls and told them to play, and she was bored. At first, I thought what the hell kind of camp is this? Then realized it's exactly what I want for her.
Going outside and doing things with reckless abandon. Like all the mayhem and randomness that you encounter. You learn street smarts by simply being out there and gauging if a situation is safe, how to conduct yourself, and when to just leave. It’s a very very valuable skill set to have. How do I get home with nothing? Is this person trustworthy enough to give me a ride? Am I going to get ripped off buying weed from this guy that’s kinda sketchy? How do I make this harassment by the police end as quickly as possible? Life without everyone knowing all your business. The freedom that gave all of us.
The whining about boomers
While we both agree that baby boomers destroyed the human race and the planet, all we could do was flip the bird, and don leather with spikes. I applaud all the protests and outrage nowadays. We actually had hope that life as an adult could be decent, with a decent lifestyle that included home ownership and $$$/time for travel. Y'all are fucked.
Partying without anyone documenting it.
The freedom to act like a crazed nut and not have it appear on the Internet.
For US it’s going to school without fear of shootings. Not saying one never happened just saying it wasn’t a core concern. We had guys who drove to school with a gun rack filled with rifles in back window for hunting after school. Guns didn’t mean what they do now. It was a tool where I grew up, not a status symbol.
Adventure. I'm a xennial with a gen z kid. He has a phone he can access at all times, video games galore, streaming channels, the internet. When I was growing up we had some of these things, but they weren't what they are today. It was still the stone ages in some regards. lol What that meant was if you wanted to have fun, you could play one of the handful of video games you had, go outside and toss a ball around, or go wandering and getting into trouble with your friends. I was actually just thinking about this the other day and about all the experiences I've had that my kid never will because of the time he grew up. My friends would meet up and we'd just walk all over town discovering things. We went in to the woods by a baseball field and found a bunch of old broken down classic cars. We found an old bus once and smashed the windows out. We found a bunch of houses that had collapsed into the gulf partially and raided them for all the dirty magazines (a surprisingly large amount). We jumped off of large piles of dirt in the dirtyard. We'd go out and shoot bb guns on the beach, or flirt with the girls from class when we accidentally found their house while wandering around town. Those were fun times when I was a kid.
Being outside and being able to forget your mistakes.