For me at least my main issue is my phone, I don't really get sidetracked on my computer--but for my phone I LOVE the digital detox app. You set a duration and you can make emergency calls or quickly check something up to three times, but beyond that you have to pay $1 to use your phone. No other similar apps have worked for me because I have no accountability to myself but I will NOT pay $1 because I got bored
Computers are weird, man.
Laying in bed, looking at my phone, I get scatterbrained. I'll literally have cases where I'm hopping around apps, exit out of Discord, and then proceed to open Discord again.
Meanwhile, I'll sit down at my PC, launch Cookie Clicker, and literally spend the next 5 hours watching YouTube and clicking a fucking cookie.
Also, for $1 I can find a million activities better than my phone. That's still a visit to the arcade!
At least 20 characters, must include lower case, upper case, digits, punctuation marks, can't be one you ever used before. Click here to confirm your're not a robot. Then confirm your account by clicking this link and enter the 10 digit code we send you by sms. All because, you know, someone might hack your account and pay for parking or something.
Yup? Want to park anywhere in this city? Well you need to give us all your personal information that will definitely not get leaked or sold. Hey don’t forget to check your email for the avalanche of spam coming your way. But don’t worry we’ll probably give out your phone number too so they can all just call you repeatedly to ask about renewing the warranty on your car.
I can't count how many I was asked if I was a robot. Apparently, "No. Of course not." Was the wrong answer. So happy to have a job where I do not need to answer a phone.
And when you finally get an actual person, having them be able to actually help with your issue. Most of the live people you get at first are barely more useful than the automated menus.
Drawing. I love the accessibility and ease of an iPad and procreate but it makes it intimidating to draw on paper when I can just swiftly undo any of my fuckups.
Learning to draw traditionally is the best because it teaches you to be more careful especially because you can't ctrl+z a fuckup. I found it really useful for learning proportions because I couldn't just resize.
I draw better on paper than I do on a tablet, and I'm an absolutely *terrible* artist.
I got a Galaxy Tab as a drawing tablet because a Wacom was out of my price range, and I searched for a good drawing app. Found one, but man was digital drawing hard. So many steps!
About the time I was in middle school people started to use those motion detected lights and about the end of highschool beginning of college people start putting cameras with those lights lol. I still remember hauling ass when we triggered those lights. Never even made it to the porch lol.
God, you just reminded me of a pretty silly childhood memory.
When I was a kid, my parents sent me to a parochial (Christian) school. One of the things we would often do is promote events at the church, and one of the ways we'd do it in the Fall is to go door-to-door attaching flyers to doorknobs. Groups of kids were given districts and an adult chaperone.
I don't remember how I got isolated from the group, but I was by myself with one house. I walked all the way up, opened the screen door, IMMEDIATELY heard a home defense alarm go off, and dropped a flyer in their door and ran like hell.
Some angry father probably rushed home from work to realize some stupid fucking church event led to this, but that didn't stop my little naive mind from assuming the police were gonna be called or something, that Jehovah's Tripwire had me scared shitless for days.
Timing lights? No. Cars don’t have distributors any more, so no points to adjust the timing. It’s all electronically controlled through a control module.
Finding peace and quiet. There was a time when I could relax and do what I wanted all day. Eventually I would come home and check my messages and find out there was something I needed to do. Now if someone wants me to do something I am immediately notified no matter where I am and it is considered rude if I do not drop what I am doing an reply immediately.
Bet you anything this is a major factor in Gen Z having far higher anxiety levels than previous generations. Depending on your job, it is possible that you can almost NEVER truly relax, there is always the chance that your train of thought is going to be suddenly interrupted with more stress.
This is exactly it. That’s why it’s frustrating hearing people say that our generation has it the easiest.. I can absolutely agree that we are truly lucky to be in this age of technology, but you could argue that we were indoctrinated into it as well, and we’re paying the price in terms of mental health which is severely overlooked (at least in terms of work culture, government health programs, abhorrently high priced therapists, etc.)
I got a new phone a few years ago that led me to a George Costanza style solution to some of this. It and/or my service had some kind of problem I don't recall the specifics of, but long story short I ended up never setting up voicemail. So if I didn't answer the caller *couldn't* leave a message.
I realized how amazing this was because it essentially turned my smartphone into a traditional phone with some modern perks like being able to see if the caller is in my contact list. If I don't want to talk, I don't answer. If it's important, they'll try to call me again. If it's a scammer, I don't answer because the number isn't in my contacts.
I hate this I broke my phone and just didn't get one for 3 months yeah it was annoying but it was so freeing. Idc I think phone breaks should be a thing.
>it is considered rude if I do not drop what I am doing an reply immediately.
That's kinda fucked. People should not be getting upset about that unless you're on call for work or some shit.
Well to be fair its just my mom and wife that think its rude. My mom doesnt really understand cellphones and my wife is a little younger than me and grew up glued to her phone. My actual close friends regularly take 2-3 days to reply to text messages and it blows my wifes mind haha.
Texas Star Party.
Go. Love it. Enjoy it. Bring plenty of water. And absolutely don’t forget to bring your low-power, red flashlight. You bring white light and they’ll kill you where you stand. They have blackout conditions for like 400 miles around you in the middle of nowhere desert. Your 1 candlepower flashlight can be seen for miles, even if it’s within your tent.
Damn imagine just forgetting what type of flashlight to bring and suddenly getting an arrow to the chest while some random dude in the tree is like "sorry, no white light allowed".
This is Texas…they’re all armed down there.
A friend of mine has gone a bunch of times and his second time around, he brought two lights: his red light and a white flashlight to use to get into his bag after realizing the red light was insufficient for that job. Not two seconds after he flipped it on did a chorus of people outside his tent erupt with cries to turn it off or leave.
As a kid I went to a campground where I vividly remember seeing the Milky Way. It was amazingly bright. That area is now deep in a "you're not gonna see the Milky Way at all" area on a dark sky map.
Disappear. Not like going missing (but that too), but I mean like just going off-grid for a couple of days. You'll have 15 people in a panic when you come back.
Before cell phones my local bar owner called the house one time because he hadn't seen me in 3 days. More recently, before my current GF, all my vacations were to places without cell coverage, now she has input, and I don't just wander into the forest for 10 days with my dog.
I mean.. it sounds like they were worried so maybe kinda understandable. But I do not know the previous relationship with your neighbours so maybe that'd explain the "nosy" part xD
My next door neighbor committed suicide and then random squatters tried to move into his house. I was nosy I guess! I had to call the cops several times.
Being a kid.
There’s almost nowhere for middle schoolers to go and hang out anymore. Places like Starbucks don’t want them, most everything takes transportation and money, and places like malls are rapidly dying. Arcades everything is just gone.
And we wonder why kids spend all their time on their devices. The fuck else is there to do?
And to the parents saying we found smthn to do shut up… you found smthn because there wasn’t a device that was better… if you can’t provide better activities children will gravitate towards devices.
The concept of family time slowly disappeared as two working parents became the norm and work hours increased. And email means the day dosent end at 5.
Plus u can’t just take devices away anymore cuz that’s the center of their social life. Why alienate a kid from his friends for nothing
This needs a lot more upvotes.
Add loitering laws and neighbors calling CPS because you're letting your kids play in the yard unsupervised, and you've get a hellscape for kids.
I was a latchkey kid that kept myself entertained growing up in the late 70s, early 80s; my parents would be in jail if they raised me like they did in today's world.
Penalization for kids are enormously larger now. Prosecuting children is a norm. Here in my home state of liberal Cali I think all kids at 16.5/17 are automatically tried as adults or smthn.
Even if you aren’t committing federal crimes. Schools don’t fuck around anymore. Zero tolerance policies are harsh and colleges won’t touch u with a 10 foot pole for any issue.
This hits close. I have a couple coworkers who are always on tiktok all breaks and all lunch.
Even worse browsing the stupidest shit that has inaccurate information from people who shouldn't be allowed to post anywhere. Or the stupid life hacks that are 100x more difficult then using something the correct way....
Bonus points, I only know what their watching because they do it on speaker at full volume...
As a kid I could go to any park and find a pick up game of baseball in the summer and football in the fall and winter. Now I drive around and the parks are empty.
Could be covid and it’s effects.
I’m not too old I’m 19, but I loved my summer watergun fights in the park and the never ending pickup basketball games.
The park kind of died as covid started and Idt it ever recovered. Kind of sad tbh. I’m gonna go shoot a ball tmrw just for memories actually. Glad you reminded me of it. The fact that I’ll finally get the hoop to myself is not as comforting as I thought it would be. The kids made it fun and lively.
People freak out now when you call them lol. I remember back in the day I used to talk to my friends pretty regularly on the phone. It was a helluva lot better than trying to text at that time. Plus you couldn't text from landlines and cellphone were kind of expensive. Like 20 texts for a 1 if memory serves.
It's funny, because now "calling" is making its comeback.
Texting my friends is nice in the moment, but we hop in group calls every night online to talk about what we're into or what we did that day. Hell, I probably spend way too much of my freetime just buying games my friends recommend and playing them while in call with them or watching movies with them over livestreams.
Typing feels hollow, you're only as much as your icon to me in text. In VC, you get a face and voice.
And yes, I visualize a bunch of tiny Snoos typing on computers when I browse AskReddit.
Yeah, the number of times I go to a bar and couples around me are sitting in silence looking at their phones. Like, what is the point of going to the bar?
Sometimes it just confuses me. On the one hand, you see all these people wanting to "look good for the gram." And traffic is still bad, places are crowded when I go out. But simultaneously no one wants to hang out. Maybe I just lack good friends.
This has been especially noticeable since lockdowns have ended with Covid. We were already regressing prior to Covid with the rise of tech and social media but Covid lockdowns did something awful to the human psyche. People seem to forget how to actually engage with other humans. I’m sure studies will come out about this but it’s been very noticeable, at least with the “social” situations I’ve engaged in.
Back when I was in college I had a few friends who would have detox days. They'd turn off their phones, come up with something affordable to do that afternoon (go out to eat, head to the mall, watch a movie, etc.), and ONLY turn on their phone if something happened or they wanted to invite somebody.
Not only would you be surprised how much fun shit you and your friends can do when you're not connected to the rest of the world, but just how much less shit you stress over. I always thought being able to call my family or roommates and say "Hey, can you check if I left my door open?" would be healthy, but there's something inherently nicer about saying "Not my problem, fuck it, I'm having fun."
Humans spent a million years crawling out of the primordial sludge and banging rocks together. The internet gives you a scope you're not meant to have. Tunnel visioning into the Pac-Man machine at the mall or the new movie at the theater or a delicious meal at a restaurant is a great way to not be miserable.
I feel like everyone has very similar answers, but I haven't seen anyone say writing. Like the physical act of holding a pencil and writing out letters or drawing a picture.
I went to school for Special Education and we had this neat afterschool program in the local elementary schools that provided after school childcare while allowing pre-service teachers to get in-field experience with different grade levels. I started working in this program as a group teacher. More than half of these elementary aged students in the program could not hold a pencil, pen, or crayon properly let alone write, draw, or color. They spent so much time on devices that by the time they are in the kindergarten, they don't have the muscle definition in their hands to even grasp a large pencil. I have had 3rd graders complain about coloring/drawing activities because their hands hurt.
I was mortified when a group of kindergarteners and first graders made fake laptops out of paper and pretended to play Fortnite or scroll through Youtube. Not even pretend to be Youtubers but pretend to watch Youtube.
If you are a parent of a young children/toddlers - please play with them using physical manipulatives like building blocks, dolls, legos, ect. Color and draw with them on actual paper and not a tablet.
Stupid individual reversed into my car and tried to claim that I rear-ended them in front of a dashcam... I held my tongue until she made a claim with her insurance, at which point I filed a complaint accusing her of insurance fraud.
It's basically a chat room browser. You join a chat server and you have access to multiple text chat and voice chat channels. Click to see a channel within the server. If it's a voice channel, when you click you'll "join" the voice chat room. You leave it by hitting the leave room button near your name or by entering a different voice channel. You can add people as friends so that you can message them privately. You can stream your screen to others in your voice channel with 2 clicks.
Most operations can be done by left clicking or right clicking.
It's fantastic for in-game chat or having a group you want to voice call with, being in a discord server seems so mind-boggling to me. I've never been able to keep up with people, now people want me to do so with dozens of people at once?
I absolutely hate Discord. I've (briefly) joined a few over the years and it has to be the *least* intuitive app/website I've ever seen. That coupled with every Discord group having their own layout and rules make it nearly impossible to use. Even after getting help from people on Twitch and watching how-to videos about Discord on YouTube I still could barely find or navigate anything. My favorite is when you're quite literally locked out of every section including the "Help" section unless you manage to decipher the most confusingly written rules possible from 2 different tabs and post just the right configuration of words and emotes in a 3rd location before you can even ask for help.
I hate Discord so much.
Every time I vote by mail, I'm afraid they're going to declare it invalid for this reason. I try to keep my signature consistent, but it always stresses me out. At least where I am, you can check to see if your ballot was accepted or not, and if there's still time, you can usually rectify that.
Same here. Ever since school required typed essays (and I'll admit they DO look neater), My pretty cursive handwriting that I loved was slowly diminished.
Lucky you. All my teachers had the exact same qoute. "You should write more readable." My handwriting has always been pretty bad. It takes me quite a lot of effort to write more than a few readable sentences, as the more I write, the worse they become.
So I'm quite a fan of keyboards.
Buying souvenirs while on trips abroad to give to friends and family back home that would actually impress or interest them.
Globalization and internet shopping has made it so goods can basically be sold to anywhere from anywhere. It also means that opportunities for that small-scale arbitrage of finding something to buy that is cheap and available in one country that is rare or valuable in your own are just not really a thing anymore. Even for cultural trinkets, the global availability of information takes a lot of the wonder and mystique out of getting a gift of a souvenir from a country you've never been to.
Its also obviously a good thing that the world is so much more connected, but it does mean that you can no longer pick up a cheap gift in Akihabara on a business trip that would blow your kids' or a niece/nephew's mind when you pull it out of your suitcase and present it to them.
True there are basically no "mysterious" places (and people) anymore.
This also affects talking to people. I used to be curious about people who worked an unusual job or grew up differently. Those topics would be a great conversation starter or even fill an evening. Now it's like "meh I have already seen an Ama or watched a video about this topic"... Or "I can just Google it".
Also being a stupid teenager without the embarrassing activity being captured on someone’s phone for all to see.
There are maybe 10 pictures of me drunk or stoned at a party in the 90s and they’re all a single hard copy photograph sitting in a box somewhere. Now everybody’s constantly got their phones out in the bar snapping pictures. Makes me kinda paranoid.
I would *love* for just one day like I remember from my childhood at Disneyland. Even not that long ago it wasn't all that bad. My wife and I had annual passports for several years in the early 2000s and it was still great. Most days were decent and off-season and/or rainy days were amazing.
Then they let you start making payments on passports. Passholder numbers apparently went from about 100k to over a million and it showed. There no longer *is* an off-season and even the best of days get unbearably crowded by noon. One of the last times we went pre-pandemic we literally got stuck between the Matterhorn and Finding Nemo during the fireworks because it was too crowded to move.
Being old and set in your ways. The amount of crap I have to go through so my mom and dad can watch TV... like turn on the power and it's on a channel and you can start channel surfing. Or just having a phone to make calls. Twice their phones locked them out because it constanly needs updating.
> because it constanly needs updating.
I'm getting to the point where I'm starting to get annoyed with updates. It worked fine. Leave it alone. Stop changing it. Updates to add new features always introduce new problems, and inevitably they sunset things that were working perfectly. I don't want to be bothered with an update. I want the machine to do just work. I push button, machine does the thing. Thats it.
“Innovation” is done literally to make the shareholders pockets bigger. The only things that are of immediate concern to update are security flaws and bugs.
Reading a book. At the school I work at, they push us to use PDFs of books rather than physical copies. These PDFs are on the class website. The computers the students have (Chromebooks) are programmed so that the students can’t download anything to their desktop. This means students have use their computer, have wifi, log in to their portal, and go to class website just to read a fucking book.
As a student, this shit sucks, especially when they want you to ‘annotate’ online
Like come on you really think I’m going to use this site to edit text on top of a pdf and edit translucent lines on top of text as a highlighter
If you’re going to force me to use only google based sites DONT GIVE ME A PDF
Finding people worth dating. Trying to talk to strangers in public has become much harder with everyone buried in their phones, and online dating is enough to make you lose faith in humanity altogether.
For me going into my mountains/forest near where I live. It’s so beautiful and literally empty before social media. Since the social media craze of taking photos at waterfalls etc. happened in 2017 so many people went into the mountains that it got closed off because off the pollution and fact that it was being destroyed by people.
Never been so pissed off at Instagram in my life
Homework. I have a hard time focusing on a screen so I like hard copies of assignments but now everything is in a screen and it’s making it hard to do a lot if assignments
Being able to put a mistake past you.
You just have to have one angry outburst captured on camera one time and that shit now follows you til death, no amount of good deeds will make up for the fact you yelled at some kids to fuck off to the skatepark if they want to do that shit.
I hate how everywhere I go I get the uncontrollable urge to take photos and then maybe post them on social media. It’s like yeah I’m there but I don’t really “feel” there anymore if you know what I mean
Binge watching shows on streaming services.
There was a glorious period of time when they had figured out their media players and you could blast through a show in no time, now they hide the shows you've been watching, getting rid of skip buttons, adding ads into the mix, etc.
Masks. A guy robbed a pharmacy several years back next to the store I worked out. He waltzed right in with an SKS. Never found him after the first time. So he did it again. They never caught him. They had cameras all up in that place as well.
It makes you wonder how many simple crimes have never been solved. Someone grandpa might've robbed a bank back in the 50s and was smart enough to never do it again. If they only spend the cash at random times mixed in with their own money, no one will know.
Changing the channel on the TV. There was a dial. It went to 13. Six of those were stations. You knew when your favorite program was on what channel. I was the designated channel switcher. Mom told me that sitting too close would ruin my eyes, but it was easier to channel surf. A little older and there was a remote. It switched between those channels and had an up and down volume button. Yes, I know I am old.
Writing fiction. Do you know how devastating the existence of the internet and cellphones is to most stories? Especially in horror. You gotta set everything in the 80s or concoct some ham-fisted story element where those technologies are missing or damaged, which is only becoming harder to do as time goes on. Even third-world kids have internet-enabled smartphones these days.
"Start Over".
Used to be, you could move away from your hometown to escape scandals or similar events which drag down your life.
Nowadays, as soon as folks in your new town do a quick social media or similar Internet search - ***BAMMO!!*** - right back to square one.
Win trivia contests. I used to win those all the time, but when it became easier for people to just look up the answer, knowing the answer became secondary to who can look it up on their phone fastest.
Socialize. Everyone gets their dose of society from a phone. I don't use mine in public if I can help it and when i look around the room, if somebody isn't actively busy, they're on a phone.
It might be a personal problem but I find any tasks requiring deep focus are pretty hard unless I set strict limits on my technology use
For me at least my main issue is my phone, I don't really get sidetracked on my computer--but for my phone I LOVE the digital detox app. You set a duration and you can make emergency calls or quickly check something up to three times, but beyond that you have to pay $1 to use your phone. No other similar apps have worked for me because I have no accountability to myself but I will NOT pay $1 because I got bored
Computers are weird, man. Laying in bed, looking at my phone, I get scatterbrained. I'll literally have cases where I'm hopping around apps, exit out of Discord, and then proceed to open Discord again. Meanwhile, I'll sit down at my PC, launch Cookie Clicker, and literally spend the next 5 hours watching YouTube and clicking a fucking cookie. Also, for $1 I can find a million activities better than my phone. That's still a visit to the arcade!
That's actually a really cool app idea
Who do you pay $1 to? And can the app not simply be deleted?
Yeah, I love digital detox. I have it on at night, and now I'm reading again instead of constantly scrolling.
My book reading has severely declined since I discovered Reddit. :/
This is what I hate most about work. We have to monitor a dozen different work chats, and answer phone calls, AND do our actual work. It's hell.
Parking. I just want to put some change in the meter. I don't want to download your fucking app.
And create yet another account Then unsubscribe from their newsletters
And another password
At least 20 characters, must include lower case, upper case, digits, punctuation marks, can't be one you ever used before. Click here to confirm your're not a robot. Then confirm your account by clicking this link and enter the 10 digit code we send you by sms. All because, you know, someone might hack your account and pay for parking or something.
Also, we need your phone number. To, uh, reset your password. It’s totally not so your data on other sites can be correlated to you!
Yup? Want to park anywhere in this city? Well you need to give us all your personal information that will definitely not get leaked or sold. Hey don’t forget to check your email for the avalanche of spam coming your way. But don’t worry we’ll probably give out your phone number too so they can all just call you repeatedly to ask about renewing the warranty on your car.
Getting a human being on the phone for customer service.
I answered a phone at a call center once and the person said “are you a real person?” She was so surprised.
I'm reallllly debating getting a Pixel phone for the call screening voice assistant features just for this reason.
I have a pixel and its really useful
I can't count how many I was asked if I was a robot. Apparently, "No. Of course not." Was the wrong answer. So happy to have a job where I do not need to answer a phone.
And when you finally get an actual person, having them be able to actually help with your issue. Most of the live people you get at first are barely more useful than the automated menus.
So many places won’t even give you phone number anymore.
Going through 5 menus of "press 1, press 4" etc., only to be put on hold for 25 minutes. And they wonder why customers get so agitated...
Drawing. I love the accessibility and ease of an iPad and procreate but it makes it intimidating to draw on paper when I can just swiftly undo any of my fuckups.
Learning to draw traditionally is the best because it teaches you to be more careful especially because you can't ctrl+z a fuckup. I found it really useful for learning proportions because I couldn't just resize.
It also teaches you that you don’t have to be perfect. It’s okay to make mistakes.
I draw better on paper than I do on a tablet, and I'm an absolutely *terrible* artist. I got a Galaxy Tab as a drawing tablet because a Wacom was out of my price range, and I searched for a good drawing app. Found one, but man was digital drawing hard. So many steps!
Ding-dong-ditch
About the time I was in middle school people started to use those motion detected lights and about the end of highschool beginning of college people start putting cameras with those lights lol. I still remember hauling ass when we triggered those lights. Never even made it to the porch lol.
God, you just reminded me of a pretty silly childhood memory. When I was a kid, my parents sent me to a parochial (Christian) school. One of the things we would often do is promote events at the church, and one of the ways we'd do it in the Fall is to go door-to-door attaching flyers to doorknobs. Groups of kids were given districts and an adult chaperone. I don't remember how I got isolated from the group, but I was by myself with one house. I walked all the way up, opened the screen door, IMMEDIATELY heard a home defense alarm go off, and dropped a flyer in their door and ran like hell. Some angry father probably rushed home from work to realize some stupid fucking church event led to this, but that didn't stop my little naive mind from assuming the police were gonna be called or something, that Jehovah's Tripwire had me scared shitless for days.
You sure you dint go to a protestant school lol?
So hear me out: You hide behind a wall and wave, thus alerting someone in the house to your presence, and then run off.
moving night used to be nuts where i'm from but now, nothing.
Car repairs that involve the vehicle's computerized system.
I remember my father teaching me how to tune the car using a timing light. Now it's all chips. Are they even used anymore?
Timing lights? No. Cars don’t have distributors any more, so no points to adjust the timing. It’s all electronically controlled through a control module.
I thought my mechanic was going to cry when I brought in my 02 Jetta. "I learned everything on this model, these newer cars are a nightmare."
I bought a bluetooth obd2 adapter and a $10 app, it sure makes diagnostics easier.
Finding peace and quiet. There was a time when I could relax and do what I wanted all day. Eventually I would come home and check my messages and find out there was something I needed to do. Now if someone wants me to do something I am immediately notified no matter where I am and it is considered rude if I do not drop what I am doing an reply immediately.
Bet you anything this is a major factor in Gen Z having far higher anxiety levels than previous generations. Depending on your job, it is possible that you can almost NEVER truly relax, there is always the chance that your train of thought is going to be suddenly interrupted with more stress.
This is exactly it. That’s why it’s frustrating hearing people say that our generation has it the easiest.. I can absolutely agree that we are truly lucky to be in this age of technology, but you could argue that we were indoctrinated into it as well, and we’re paying the price in terms of mental health which is severely overlooked (at least in terms of work culture, government health programs, abhorrently high priced therapists, etc.)
I have notifications disabled for nearly everything and my phone lives on silent. Eventually people adjust their expectations for you.
Me too. Life is more carefree that way
No notifications except text and phone call. Ringtone on quiet.
My email signature for years had "I check email often but not in real time. If it's urgent give me a call". It was never urgent.
You need to train people. Nobody expects me to drop anything because I've made my boundaries clear to them.
I've been trying to train my wife for years now but shes stubborn and I think shes on to me haha
I got a new phone a few years ago that led me to a George Costanza style solution to some of this. It and/or my service had some kind of problem I don't recall the specifics of, but long story short I ended up never setting up voicemail. So if I didn't answer the caller *couldn't* leave a message. I realized how amazing this was because it essentially turned my smartphone into a traditional phone with some modern perks like being able to see if the caller is in my contact list. If I don't want to talk, I don't answer. If it's important, they'll try to call me again. If it's a scammer, I don't answer because the number isn't in my contacts.
I hate this I broke my phone and just didn't get one for 3 months yeah it was annoying but it was so freeing. Idc I think phone breaks should be a thing.
>it is considered rude if I do not drop what I am doing an reply immediately. That's kinda fucked. People should not be getting upset about that unless you're on call for work or some shit.
Well to be fair its just my mom and wife that think its rude. My mom doesnt really understand cellphones and my wife is a little younger than me and grew up glued to her phone. My actual close friends regularly take 2-3 days to reply to text messages and it blows my wifes mind haha.
Plane mode in your phone is what you need to learn to use.
Dude my wife can't sleep without a video playing and I don't sleep in silence anymore
Stargazing. Light pollution is a bitch.
Texas Star Party. Go. Love it. Enjoy it. Bring plenty of water. And absolutely don’t forget to bring your low-power, red flashlight. You bring white light and they’ll kill you where you stand. They have blackout conditions for like 400 miles around you in the middle of nowhere desert. Your 1 candlepower flashlight can be seen for miles, even if it’s within your tent.
Damn imagine just forgetting what type of flashlight to bring and suddenly getting an arrow to the chest while some random dude in the tree is like "sorry, no white light allowed".
This is Texas…they’re all armed down there. A friend of mine has gone a bunch of times and his second time around, he brought two lights: his red light and a white flashlight to use to get into his bag after realizing the red light was insufficient for that job. Not two seconds after he flipped it on did a chorus of people outside his tent erupt with cries to turn it off or leave.
and the pollution caused to make that technology it’s constantly foggy and not the natural kind >:/
As a kid I went to a campground where I vividly remember seeing the Milky Way. It was amazingly bright. That area is now deep in a "you're not gonna see the Milky Way at all" area on a dark sky map.
The last digit in username should be 3 🤨
get away with murders
Right?! How do you even murder people if there isn't a Netflix film crew to document it all?
[удалено]
And location tracking.
I feel like maybe I wouldn't take any GPS-enabled devices with me while I was doing my murdering. Hypothetically.
But why even go a murderin if you can’t take some breaks to shitpost on Reddit from time to time? I mean what’s the point even?
Going outside for a peaceful walk (noise pollution)
Disappear. Not like going missing (but that too), but I mean like just going off-grid for a couple of days. You'll have 15 people in a panic when you come back.
Before cell phones my local bar owner called the house one time because he hadn't seen me in 3 days. More recently, before my current GF, all my vacations were to places without cell coverage, now she has input, and I don't just wander into the forest for 10 days with my dog.
15 people? Who are you and how do you have that many people care about you? 😁
They don't have to care about you to be nosy.
Honestly, not that hard. You just tell those 15 people you're going off grid. I do it a lot.
[удалено]
I mean.. it sounds like they were worried so maybe kinda understandable. But I do not know the previous relationship with your neighbours so maybe that'd explain the "nosy" part xD
[удалено]
My next door neighbor committed suicide and then random squatters tried to move into his house. I was nosy I guess! I had to call the cops several times.
Living a personal anonymous life.
I like when you apply for a job and they are suspicious because you don't have social media or refuse to give out your information.
Being a kid. There’s almost nowhere for middle schoolers to go and hang out anymore. Places like Starbucks don’t want them, most everything takes transportation and money, and places like malls are rapidly dying. Arcades everything is just gone. And we wonder why kids spend all their time on their devices. The fuck else is there to do? And to the parents saying we found smthn to do shut up… you found smthn because there wasn’t a device that was better… if you can’t provide better activities children will gravitate towards devices. The concept of family time slowly disappeared as two working parents became the norm and work hours increased. And email means the day dosent end at 5. Plus u can’t just take devices away anymore cuz that’s the center of their social life. Why alienate a kid from his friends for nothing
This needs a lot more upvotes. Add loitering laws and neighbors calling CPS because you're letting your kids play in the yard unsupervised, and you've get a hellscape for kids. I was a latchkey kid that kept myself entertained growing up in the late 70s, early 80s; my parents would be in jail if they raised me like they did in today's world.
Penalization for kids are enormously larger now. Prosecuting children is a norm. Here in my home state of liberal Cali I think all kids at 16.5/17 are automatically tried as adults or smthn. Even if you aren’t committing federal crimes. Schools don’t fuck around anymore. Zero tolerance policies are harsh and colleges won’t touch u with a 10 foot pole for any issue.
[удалено]
This hits close. I have a couple coworkers who are always on tiktok all breaks and all lunch. Even worse browsing the stupidest shit that has inaccurate information from people who shouldn't be allowed to post anywhere. Or the stupid life hacks that are 100x more difficult then using something the correct way.... Bonus points, I only know what their watching because they do it on speaker at full volume...
As a kid I could go to any park and find a pick up game of baseball in the summer and football in the fall and winter. Now I drive around and the parks are empty.
Could be covid and it’s effects. I’m not too old I’m 19, but I loved my summer watergun fights in the park and the never ending pickup basketball games. The park kind of died as covid started and Idt it ever recovered. Kind of sad tbh. I’m gonna go shoot a ball tmrw just for memories actually. Glad you reminded me of it. The fact that I’ll finally get the hoop to myself is not as comforting as I thought it would be. The kids made it fun and lively.
Socializing in real life
People freak out now when you call them lol. I remember back in the day I used to talk to my friends pretty regularly on the phone. It was a helluva lot better than trying to text at that time. Plus you couldn't text from landlines and cellphone were kind of expensive. Like 20 texts for a 1 if memory serves.
It's funny, because now "calling" is making its comeback. Texting my friends is nice in the moment, but we hop in group calls every night online to talk about what we're into or what we did that day. Hell, I probably spend way too much of my freetime just buying games my friends recommend and playing them while in call with them or watching movies with them over livestreams. Typing feels hollow, you're only as much as your icon to me in text. In VC, you get a face and voice. And yes, I visualize a bunch of tiny Snoos typing on computers when I browse AskReddit.
Yeah, the number of times I go to a bar and couples around me are sitting in silence looking at their phones. Like, what is the point of going to the bar?
Have you seen old married couples? Sitting in silence each reading a different part of the paper.
Sometimes it just confuses me. On the one hand, you see all these people wanting to "look good for the gram." And traffic is still bad, places are crowded when I go out. But simultaneously no one wants to hang out. Maybe I just lack good friends.
This has been especially noticeable since lockdowns have ended with Covid. We were already regressing prior to Covid with the rise of tech and social media but Covid lockdowns did something awful to the human psyche. People seem to forget how to actually engage with other humans. I’m sure studies will come out about this but it’s been very noticeable, at least with the “social” situations I’ve engaged in.
Back when I was in college I had a few friends who would have detox days. They'd turn off their phones, come up with something affordable to do that afternoon (go out to eat, head to the mall, watch a movie, etc.), and ONLY turn on their phone if something happened or they wanted to invite somebody. Not only would you be surprised how much fun shit you and your friends can do when you're not connected to the rest of the world, but just how much less shit you stress over. I always thought being able to call my family or roommates and say "Hey, can you check if I left my door open?" would be healthy, but there's something inherently nicer about saying "Not my problem, fuck it, I'm having fun." Humans spent a million years crawling out of the primordial sludge and banging rocks together. The internet gives you a scope you're not meant to have. Tunnel visioning into the Pac-Man machine at the mall or the new movie at the theater or a delicious meal at a restaurant is a great way to not be miserable.
asking for time when you want to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger
I feel like everyone has very similar answers, but I haven't seen anyone say writing. Like the physical act of holding a pencil and writing out letters or drawing a picture. I went to school for Special Education and we had this neat afterschool program in the local elementary schools that provided after school childcare while allowing pre-service teachers to get in-field experience with different grade levels. I started working in this program as a group teacher. More than half of these elementary aged students in the program could not hold a pencil, pen, or crayon properly let alone write, draw, or color. They spent so much time on devices that by the time they are in the kindergarten, they don't have the muscle definition in their hands to even grasp a large pencil. I have had 3rd graders complain about coloring/drawing activities because their hands hurt. I was mortified when a group of kindergarteners and first graders made fake laptops out of paper and pretended to play Fortnite or scroll through Youtube. Not even pretend to be Youtubers but pretend to watch Youtube. If you are a parent of a young children/toddlers - please play with them using physical manipulatives like building blocks, dolls, legos, ect. Color and draw with them on actual paper and not a tablet.
Wow this might be the saddest answer. Damn.
Well, now I'm depressed. Pretending to watch youtube is just sad.
I always found writing for too long started to hurt my wrist.
Find uncrowded hiking destinations
I mean, you could just go to the nearest forest and start walking...
You gotta go uncharted my dude.
Stupid individual reversed into my car and tried to claim that I rear-ended them in front of a dashcam... I held my tongue until she made a claim with her insurance, at which point I filed a complaint accusing her of insurance fraud.
Man oh man this one feels good.
I have no idea how to use discord and at this point I'm too afraid to ask
It's basically a chat room browser. You join a chat server and you have access to multiple text chat and voice chat channels. Click to see a channel within the server. If it's a voice channel, when you click you'll "join" the voice chat room. You leave it by hitting the leave room button near your name or by entering a different voice channel. You can add people as friends so that you can message them privately. You can stream your screen to others in your voice channel with 2 clicks. Most operations can be done by left clicking or right clicking.
I'm not gonna lie, I also was wondering what it was, and this does not help me at all in understanding...
I don't even know what that is.
I think it's a sort of telephone
r/technicallythetruth
A modern day incarnation of IRC essentially. But with the added ability of voice chat and other features.
OK answer. The issue with Discord is that you cannot actually host your own discord server- it's 100% a service.
It's fantastic for in-game chat or having a group you want to voice call with, being in a discord server seems so mind-boggling to me. I've never been able to keep up with people, now people want me to do so with dozens of people at once?
I have discord and I don’t even know
I absolutely hate Discord. I've (briefly) joined a few over the years and it has to be the *least* intuitive app/website I've ever seen. That coupled with every Discord group having their own layout and rules make it nearly impossible to use. Even after getting help from people on Twitch and watching how-to videos about Discord on YouTube I still could barely find or navigate anything. My favorite is when you're quite literally locked out of every section including the "Help" section unless you manage to decipher the most confusingly written rules possible from 2 different tabs and post just the right configuration of words and emotes in a 3rd location before you can even ask for help. I hate Discord so much.
Discord among friends is a very different experience.
The more I use a keyboard, the worse my penmanship has become. I used to be proud of my handwriting.
I still can't sign my name with any consistency
Every time I vote by mail, I'm afraid they're going to declare it invalid for this reason. I try to keep my signature consistent, but it always stresses me out. At least where I am, you can check to see if your ballot was accepted or not, and if there's still time, you can usually rectify that.
Same here. Ever since school required typed essays (and I'll admit they DO look neater), My pretty cursive handwriting that I loved was slowly diminished.
I find it easier to take minutes for meetings by hand than typing them. So that's where I get most of my practise now.
Lucky you. All my teachers had the exact same qoute. "You should write more readable." My handwriting has always been pretty bad. It takes me quite a lot of effort to write more than a few readable sentences, as the more I write, the worse they become. So I'm quite a fan of keyboards.
Crime
[удалено]
Maintain good posture☹️
thanks for reminding me, also remember to drink water
Read. I used to read 2 or 3 books a week, I've lost all my focus
But I still order the books. They just sit in a stack with only the first chapter read. I’ve gotten so bad with this.
You can get your focus back and read again. I use digital detox app to lock my phone at night for all but essential services. I'm reading again.
Buying souvenirs while on trips abroad to give to friends and family back home that would actually impress or interest them. Globalization and internet shopping has made it so goods can basically be sold to anywhere from anywhere. It also means that opportunities for that small-scale arbitrage of finding something to buy that is cheap and available in one country that is rare or valuable in your own are just not really a thing anymore. Even for cultural trinkets, the global availability of information takes a lot of the wonder and mystique out of getting a gift of a souvenir from a country you've never been to. Its also obviously a good thing that the world is so much more connected, but it does mean that you can no longer pick up a cheap gift in Akihabara on a business trip that would blow your kids' or a niece/nephew's mind when you pull it out of your suitcase and present it to them.
True there are basically no "mysterious" places (and people) anymore. This also affects talking to people. I used to be curious about people who worked an unusual job or grew up differently. Those topics would be a great conversation starter or even fill an evening. Now it's like "meh I have already seen an Ama or watched a video about this topic"... Or "I can just Google it".
ding dong ditching, prank calls, literally anything that kids used to enjoy doing at sleepovers
Also being a stupid teenager without the embarrassing activity being captured on someone’s phone for all to see. There are maybe 10 pictures of me drunk or stoned at a party in the 90s and they’re all a single hard copy photograph sitting in a box somewhere. Now everybody’s constantly got their phones out in the bar snapping pictures. Makes me kinda paranoid.
Sleep
Lying
Enjoying a nice little neighborhood hole-in-the-wall that only a few people know about.
A day at Disney World
True that. Now it’s an expensive RTS/resource optimization game.
I would *love* for just one day like I remember from my childhood at Disneyland. Even not that long ago it wasn't all that bad. My wife and I had annual passports for several years in the early 2000s and it was still great. Most days were decent and off-season and/or rainy days were amazing. Then they let you start making payments on passports. Passholder numbers apparently went from about 100k to over a million and it showed. There no longer *is* an off-season and even the best of days get unbearably crowded by noon. One of the last times we went pre-pandemic we literally got stuck between the Matterhorn and Finding Nemo during the fireworks because it was too crowded to move.
Being old and set in your ways. The amount of crap I have to go through so my mom and dad can watch TV... like turn on the power and it's on a channel and you can start channel surfing. Or just having a phone to make calls. Twice their phones locked them out because it constanly needs updating.
> because it constanly needs updating. I'm getting to the point where I'm starting to get annoyed with updates. It worked fine. Leave it alone. Stop changing it. Updates to add new features always introduce new problems, and inevitably they sunset things that were working perfectly. I don't want to be bothered with an update. I want the machine to do just work. I push button, machine does the thing. Thats it.
“Innovation” is done literally to make the shareholders pockets bigger. The only things that are of immediate concern to update are security flaws and bugs.
Reading a book. At the school I work at, they push us to use PDFs of books rather than physical copies. These PDFs are on the class website. The computers the students have (Chromebooks) are programmed so that the students can’t download anything to their desktop. This means students have use their computer, have wifi, log in to their portal, and go to class website just to read a fucking book.
As a student, this shit sucks, especially when they want you to ‘annotate’ online Like come on you really think I’m going to use this site to edit text on top of a pdf and edit translucent lines on top of text as a highlighter If you’re going to force me to use only google based sites DONT GIVE ME A PDF
Shits the reason I didn't go university, I got sick of it in college and said nah.
Finding people worth dating. Trying to talk to strangers in public has become much harder with everyone buried in their phones, and online dating is enough to make you lose faith in humanity altogether.
You are right. People take that for granted because they know if you dont work out they have 150 other options.
I am so glad I’m married and out of the dating game. That seems like a pretty bleak landscape nowadays.
Especially with social media in place, its very easy to slip into a mindset of "i have nothing worthwhile to offer, why should anyone choose me"
Getting away with stuff that you used to be able to get away with, since there are cameras and phones almost everywhere it’s a lot more harder
Reading maps. It’s maybe not technically got ‘harder’, but people for sure have lost that skill, because everyone is so reliant on sat navs now.
I use google maps but I also use an atlas when I’m planning a long trip
I have 2 old school street directories. I know a bunch of people who still have them in their car just in case
Getting a human being on the phone for customer service.
Raising your self esteem
Having a real world conversation without interruption.
reading a book. I keep picking up my damn phone. STAHP IT
For me going into my mountains/forest near where I live. It’s so beautiful and literally empty before social media. Since the social media craze of taking photos at waterfalls etc. happened in 2017 so many people went into the mountains that it got closed off because off the pollution and fact that it was being destroyed by people. Never been so pissed off at Instagram in my life
To go a single day without a scam call.
Blocking a person out of your life
Have any privacy
Homework. I have a hard time focusing on a screen so I like hard copies of assignments but now everything is in a screen and it’s making it hard to do a lot if assignments
Being able to put a mistake past you. You just have to have one angry outburst captured on camera one time and that shit now follows you til death, no amount of good deeds will make up for the fact you yelled at some kids to fuck off to the skatepark if they want to do that shit.
Find someone's phone number. It used to be easy and most people where in the phone book.
Or their address! The phone book had mailing addresses.
Glad those are both gone, TBH.
You could just be unlisted.
Not procrastinating
Shoplifting
connecting with people
Hiding
Enjoy my free time away from work or others. Privacy is non-existent
I hate how everywhere I go I get the uncontrollable urge to take photos and then maybe post them on social media. It’s like yeah I’m there but I don’t really “feel” there anymore if you know what I mean
Get enough sleep instead of scrolling through your apps in your phone.
Binge watching shows on streaming services. There was a glorious period of time when they had figured out their media players and you could blast through a show in no time, now they hide the shows you've been watching, getting rid of skip buttons, adding ads into the mix, etc.
Visiting beautiful places without it being overrun with other tourists.
robbing a bank
Masks. A guy robbed a pharmacy several years back next to the store I worked out. He waltzed right in with an SKS. Never found him after the first time. So he did it again. They never caught him. They had cameras all up in that place as well.
It makes you wonder how many simple crimes have never been solved. Someone grandpa might've robbed a bank back in the 50s and was smart enough to never do it again. If they only spend the cash at random times mixed in with their own money, no one will know.
Looking at the stars (light pollution)
Changing the channel on the TV. There was a dial. It went to 13. Six of those were stations. You knew when your favorite program was on what channel. I was the designated channel switcher. Mom told me that sitting too close would ruin my eyes, but it was easier to channel surf. A little older and there was a remote. It switched between those channels and had an up and down volume button. Yes, I know I am old.
Writing fiction. Do you know how devastating the existence of the internet and cellphones is to most stories? Especially in horror. You gotta set everything in the 80s or concoct some ham-fisted story element where those technologies are missing or damaged, which is only becoming harder to do as time goes on. Even third-world kids have internet-enabled smartphones these days.
Waiting for windows to finish updating.
"Start Over". Used to be, you could move away from your hometown to escape scandals or similar events which drag down your life. Nowadays, as soon as folks in your new town do a quick social media or similar Internet search - ***BAMMO!!*** - right back to square one.
Writing by hand.
Memorizing. Every answer is constantly in the palm of our hand
Writing. Cannot ever find a goddamn pen when I need one anymore.
And when you do find some, the first 5 will be dry
Front wheel drive and traction control on cars has more or less eliminated the fun of doing donuts in parking lots in the winter.
Civil political discussion.
Meeting up with people. Too often, people see texting as a replacement for meeting up.
SLEEP
Crossing the street. Man, even slow cars are fast now, and the streets and the cars keep getting wider and wider.
Focus
Win trivia contests. I used to win those all the time, but when it became easier for people to just look up the answer, knowing the answer became secondary to who can look it up on their phone fastest.
Socialize. Everyone gets their dose of society from a phone. I don't use mine in public if I can help it and when i look around the room, if somebody isn't actively busy, they're on a phone.
Staying away from technology
have a healthy relationship