I think we've brought it up before that normal human relationships these days require a low-level flow of silly internet images. I don't know why it's like this but otherwise you might be viewed as antisocial. Can you two post some images and maybe videos so I can have an archive for when I know I need to contact someone to make them believe I'm a normal human being but don't have anything to say (because I'm a cunt)?
>>72311 Funny how Greggs is a place everyone knows, as though he's your mate or something. I've never known the cunt - what's his place like? Fatties, poor hygene and sausage rolls?
I fucking knew it. I've never been able to find evidence (maybe never tried), but here it is in black and white and the other colours: Greggs used to be called Braggs. At least it did in that same part of the UK where we call our mothers mom.
Recently I've been made aware that Gen-Z have started bullying us about our ancient technology and ankle-socks. I'm not ready for all this, feel like if I went back in time 10 years I'd be doing alright.
I always sense a hint of deep, burning jealousy in the way zoomers make fun of 90s and early 00s tech. Like, it's the stuff that's clearly a precursor to what we have now, it's not a bonkers ancient artefact that they wouldn't even have the first clue how to use like a ZX Spectrum or C64, and that enables them to have a nostalgia for it despite not really experiencing it.
At least, that's what I interpret the trend towards "analogue horror" where it's deliberately stylised like a 90s handy-cam and VHS, and the whole revival of PS1 style videogames, and even IRL 90s fashion made/is still making a brief comeback. None of those things are created by or for our generation, who were there to remember it; it's for people to whom Skyrim is a fond childhood memory.
>>72432 For an average 16-18 year old, by the time they were 3/4 and aware of what mobile phones their parents/older siblings used, iPhones would have been the norm. They grew up in an age where most people were carrying a computer in their pocket at all times. I think to them, the idea of living without this convenience is very alien and kind of scary. Signal permitting, they have access to good GPS, the internet, online food/product delivery, infinite hours of entertainment on YouTube and other streaming apps, social media and messaging services etc. Everything is in the palm of their hands.
I compare it to the mid 00s when if I needed to find out how to get somewhere, I would have to go on a computer at home or if out and about at a web cafe or library, go on Google Maps, and print out a list of directions. Now it takes 10 seconds to put in the destination, select to set off from my location, and follow the map in real time. Even trivial shit like buying a new game, niche ones were expensive or hard to find, so you'd go to every Gamestation, GAME, EB, Argos, and HMV in town to find the right one. Compared to nowadays I turn on my Xbox I navigate to the game on the store, I buy it and download, and I don't even have to leave my house.
I don't think they're jealous. They just see it (correctly) as a grim time. I certainly wouldn't want to go back.
>I don't think they're jealous. They just see it (correctly) as a grim time.
It's all relative. I'm 50 and I remember a time before the Internet existed at all in daily life. If you wanted to buy music as a youngun, you had to hop on a bus to the big record shop on the other side of town, a trip that could take almost the entire afternoon after school, with no guarantee that they had the latest album or single you were looking for. Yes, you could've just called them, but part of it was about the whole experience of the bus ride and browsing that record shop. Something that just isn't the same today with instant online availability of almost all music that has ever been made.
Portable music existed only on your knock-off Walkman (or a real Sony Walkman, if your parents were posh or if you had a lucrative summer job), with all the drawbacks of cassette tapes. My brother had a mid-range Onkyo tape deck, which made him (and by extension, me) very popular for the ability to tape CDs for other people in decent quality, unlike most of them who has some sort of shite Amstrad music system with atrocious sound quality. But contrary to popular belief, cassette tape drives would not normally eat your tapes, as is the cliché today. Something had to be very wrong with the transport mechanism, which was quite rare in my experience. At least if you didn't have the cheapest gear on the market.
Streaming obviously didn't exist. If you were lucky, then your parents had a decent quality VCR where you could tape movies off the TV, with 240-minute brand-name blank tapes costing five to seven quid. Adjusted for inflation, that's a good £15 today. Or you could rent movies on physical VHS tapes. Which were often quite worn out. Picture quality was mediocre, but if your VCR was well looked after then it was worlds apart from what VHS video filters will have you believe today. Something taped off the TV with good reception, using brand-name video tape and on a machine that was in good nick would have almost no picture artefacts at all.
I started driving in the early 90s, and an assortment of neatly folded maps in your car was absolutely essential. It was also much more common to pull over and ask for directions. Which I think is also obsolete now, because when was the last time you two did that.
We didn't have social media, your social sphere was typically limited to the school you went to, and it was actually a bit uncommon to even have many friends who went to other schools in the same town. Did we miss out? No, I don't think we did. I'm actually kind of glad I'm past the age bracket where social media typically matters the most. I even boycotted Facebook and never had a profile, although I was still relatively young, at the beginning of my 30s, when it started. I don't see much of a benefit to social media, to be honest. IMO it tends to both make people more unhappy by comparing their lives to other people's, and it unduly permits and promotes narcissism. I don't see the fucking point of about 99% of all the Instagram stories I've seen, beyond feeding someone's mentioned narcissism. And I want to push every single person over a cliff who poses on an actual cliff for a selfie that'll go on their social media. I went to Dover last year and in some areas it's absolutely fucking mental how many people queue up just to take pictures of themselves in the most scenic spots.
Were the late 80s to early 90s when I was a younglad a grim time? Even more grim than the 00s when a great deal more technology existed? No, I don't think so. If you've grown up with smartphones, social media, streaming services and always-on Internet, then yes, you'd probably be bored to tears if you travelled back in time to 1989. But technology wise, in its own way, it was an exciting time to be around. Especially from the mid-90s and the dawn of the Internet age, but also before that. You saw the emergence of digital music, of video games and game consoles, and even mobile phones. We had it good. In our own way.
>But technology wise, in its own way, it was an exciting time to be around. Especially from the mid-90s and the dawn of the Internet age
That's where I reckon the jealousy comes in. Jealousy maybe isn't quite the correct word, I will give otherlad the credit that there is indeed a hint of fear perhaps. But they are fascinated with that era, the era of my childhood and your teens. They clearly know and understand that it was a turning point in history, it was a place in time where a complete paradigm shift occurred of the kind that's unlikely to happen again for a great many years.
millennials are going to end up going down as one of the most influential generations in history, and it's going to be because of cat pictures with text at the bottom. the memes and bizarre irreverent humour that now characterised the internet was our creation. the weird but distinctly altered use of normal language, the irony and detachment, that everyone now knows and takes for granted, that's our thing.
zoomers are salty that they have to follow in our footsteps.
>>72436 >BUT TECHNOLOGY WISE, IN ITS OWN WAY, IT WAS AN EXCITING TIME TO BE AROUND. ESPECIALLY FROM THE MID-90S AND THE DAWN OF THE INTERNET AGE
That's true, despite me talking about how great convenience is, there isn't the excitement of the 90s-early 00s. Stuff like getting a family computer with Windows 95, and going on the internet for the first time when it was a special thing. The leap from 16bit 2D to 32bit 3D, thinking the Final Fantasy VII opening FMV had the most realistic graphics ever, exploring those early open worlds. Mobile phones becoming mainstream, then they became polyphonic, then colour screens and cameras, eventually culminating in the smartphones of today.
I can think of stuff in recent years that has been quite transformative, like contactless, 4G/5G, stuff like Uber, Amazon giving you next day delivery on pretty much any item you could want or need (within reason). Streaming, both at home and on the go. Probably others I can't even remember.
In terms of gaming (just because I follow that area), the jump from PS4 to PS5 was unimpressive, there are games like Starfield and Rise of the Ronin which look and play like they could have been made in 2007, and they still seem to keep on trying to make VR a thing when most people don't give a fuck. Mobile phones, a 2015 iPhone and a 2024 iPhone are probably not massively different, save for AI and mega cameras. Not as different as a shitty black and white Siemens phone and then the first iPhone.
Maybe the technological state of my formative years weren't as grim as I thought.
You talk about shitty pictures on the Internet the way my dad talks about rock music. You need to tone down the self congratulatory rhetoric.
Rage comics aren't the fucking beatles. And I would look at my dad equally bizarrely if he tried to take credit for the beatles.
In 15 years gen z will be talking about how they invented doing a 30 second dance whilst dressed as an anime character with an equal level of self importance.
If you missed the large helping of self deprecation in which "influential" was contrasted with "cat pictures with text at the bottom" then I don't know what to really say, lad.
I quit smoking in 2012 and occasionally I've still got dreams at night where I've started smoking again. And where I'm then very disappointed with myself.
These days I'll only smoke when I drink. I bought a pack of fags on Christmas eve because I was hammered, and they lasted me well into the third week of January. I'm perfectly fine going without between times. Off out for a drink and a date today so I will probably end up buying some. Then again I've also got a gram so actually there's no "probably" about it.
You know how most people get addicted to things like, in the sense that they need their fix routinely? For some reason I have never been like that, I am perfectly fine indulging in a vice every month or two, but at the same time I would find it very difficult to just say "nah that's it, never going to smoke/drink/take a drug again".
>>72310 I don't really get who's screaming in this one. Sully scared of furries not that funny. Furries scared of Sully? That's the whole premise of the film.
>>72363 This one too, the mashup is follows no logic.
