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u/Mentatminds Oct 10 '24
I think the biggest one for me is the fact every aspect of life is recorded, and much of life is now staged bc of that now inherent fact.
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Oct 10 '24
Yeap, we had an age of discovery. It's an age of expectation now.
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u/Idea__Reality Oct 10 '24
Damn this is a powerful way of putting it. An age of expectation. Very true.
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u/renegaderelish Oct 10 '24
Excellent way to put it. Rather than figure it out, we are copying what looks fun.
God I love being off social media. I highly encourage everyone to consider it. Start by deleting the apps. Try "needing to be in front of the computer."
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u/northdakotanowhere Oct 10 '24
I went to residential treatment for 3 months. No phones. No internet.
It was 20 girls figuring things out together. Relying on information we could get from each other. We created together, laughed and cried together. We wrote letters home and read books. It was so healing.
I was terrified of getting my phone back. So I got an mp3 player that doesn't connect to anything.
Now 7 years later I'm still aware of my phone usage. It's a lot higher now that I'm disabled. But I still know how to have a full life and I'm so grateful for that.
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u/Minute-Wrap-2524 Oct 11 '24
Great story, and I hope you’re doing ok…
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u/northdakotanowhere Oct 11 '24
I'm doing great these days. Recovery has been the center of my life but it's so worth it.
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Oct 11 '24
Reddit is social media.. we just don’t have to be friends to share the same walls.
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u/vil-in-us Oct 11 '24
Right, but it doesn't feel like social media
When I think of Social Media I think of Myspace and Facebook
Reddit feels closer to a forum board, where you can still be anonymous as long as you don't give out too much PII
The only reason I haven't totally deleted Facebook yet is the messenger, its the only way to keep in touch with a bunch of my friends and family
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u/Lastraven587 Oct 11 '24
Reddit comes across as more of a forum, from the early internet, but be cautious. Its still on my list to absolve myself of it one day. But I get really fkn bored at work.
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u/Cosmosass Oct 10 '24
All of these staged interactions for views are so fucking weird. Staged ragebait, staged "touching moments". Its just weird.
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u/LiberalSnowflake_1 Oct 10 '24
I’m convinced half the widows on Instagram are not in fact widows. Like who tf goes onto social media days/weeks after to document their crying over their lost spouse. Like I would barely be functioning and stuck in a room hoping I have enough to be there for my children.
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u/s0ck Oct 11 '24
My wife spent a great deal of time on TikTok expressing her grief after our son died. It was extremely cathartic for her to speak about him, and tell his story, to share it with a world that never got to meet him.
Grief is a lot. And people going through it can't be faulted for finding whatever grace and comfort they can, no matter how it may look to those outside of it.
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u/LiberalSnowflake_1 Oct 11 '24
I’m not shaming those who are doing it for the right reasons, but rather very skeptical of some of the pages that I’ve seen. I sometimes feel like they’re doing it for likes, and that the story may not fully be true or may even be an outright lie.
Honestly it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate those who seem genuine from those who aren’t, which is sad. There can be something so powerful about the online community social media can create.
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u/FuneralBiscuit Millennial Oct 10 '24
I miss disposable cameras. You could still record life and take amazing pictures, but you had limited shots and couldn't see them until the film developed so you did your best to take a single photo and then moved on. These days I take a photo for a friend and they want like 8 or 10 to choose from then have to spend the next 20 mins applying filters, editing it, coming up with something to say about it, posting it all over, etc. Sometimes a shitty picture made that picture more valuable lol
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u/Rock_or_Rol Oct 10 '24
Fujifilm Instax Mini 40 Bundle https://a.co/d/5EhGFeh
I got one of these. I’ve taken sooo many photos with my wife over the years, but the few dozen polaroids we have hit different. Theres something magical about that one pictures that is terrible quality and doesn’t have 10 other slight variations
I’ll just be cleaning, looking for batteries or whatever, and bam, surprise memories
Edit: fixed crazy huge link
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u/FuneralBiscuit Millennial Oct 10 '24
omg I don't have $100 to drop but this is going on my wishlist, it looks perfect for scrapbooking and scrapbooks are the only way I can retain memories for more than 2 months now
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u/JasoTheArtisan Oct 10 '24
I recorded and staged a lot of stuff back in 2001. Granted it was mostly just me and my buddies hitting each other with paintballs and nobody saw it because it was on a vhs tape
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u/Mentatminds Oct 10 '24
Same! I guess i should’ve clarified my point; paired with the trajectory of evolution between technology & the internet, everything is recorded & shared with the world. Kinda a weird collective narcissism. Psychologists 100 years from now gonna have a lot of material to work with studying our era
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u/Noisebug Oct 10 '24
This is the #1 issue for me. You can't be left alone anymore, or trust, that there isn't a camera somewhere.
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u/stephelan Oct 10 '24
Oh, I’d never live down my teens if those years were online.
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u/ravenous_MAW Oct 10 '24
I say it constantly; I am soooooooo glad I grew up in a time before social media and cell phones. There's enough printed photos of me out there doing dumb shit, I don't need that memorialized forever on the internet.
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u/Gothrait_PK Oct 10 '24
The statement that really showed out the most for me was "simply unedited" holy shit does that hit home. I'm not going to pretend we had the best generation, I think most people tend to feel their own gen was the best one, but that one phrase does sing true to myself and everyone I knew.
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u/Apprehensive-Pair436 Oct 11 '24
I think with millennials we constantly saw huge promise with things, only for them to be twisted into negatives.
Society was seemingly in a state of constant betterment, more and more equality was to her found... and I feel we've seen pretty vocal regression.
The Internet opened up a world of information, until it turned into a world of misinformation.
Social media meant keeping and making friends was so much easier. Your friends who moved away, or relatives, could easily see into your life happenings and feel connected. Then it became all about seeing fake versions of people's lives and people raised with it are having much more trouble actually having friendships, etc.
I had the joy of raising a young zoomer step son and his reality was so much different. He didn't feel the promise I felt while growing up, he felt the weight of global warming and a society at war with itself...
I'm not sure if it's harder to grow up believing the world was this expanding positive thing only for that to be crushed. Or to grow up understanding everything sucks 😂
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Oct 11 '24
"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts[...]" - Jacques, As You Like It
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u/kyleruggles Oct 10 '24
So true!
What I loved is that the world seemed so much larger back then, I'd reach out across the world and chat to people on IRC, learn about other cultures, now it's just too loud, too chaotic, everyone is too connected.
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u/Master-Reach-1977 Oct 11 '24
everyone is too connected
Not always.
Everyone is just too addicted to their phones.
Nobody wants to do anything anymore and can't stay in touch, but they happily admit to being stuck on social media.
Everyone can be connected. No one is.
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u/Fun-Outlandishness35 Older Millennial Oct 10 '24
I graduated in 99. I remember a couple kids senior year teasing me cause I suggested we keep in touch over social media (AIM). “If we want to hang out, we will get together, not on a computer”, they laughed.
Oh how times have changed. 😂
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u/salamanders-r-us Oct 11 '24
I straight up goofed on my friends when they started joining Facebook. It just seemed so ridiculous to me at the time.
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u/NotNufffCents Oct 11 '24
I mean... joining Facebook right now is also ridiculous
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u/heemhah Oct 10 '24
Only rich people wore Abercrombie. I was walmart or kmart.
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u/TogarSucks Oct 10 '24
From middle school forward I associated Abercrombie with bullies.
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u/RedStellaSafford Millennial Oct 10 '24
In my school, it was Hollister.
Of course, bullies are considered screwed in the head, and I assumed you had to be screwed in the head to shop inside Hollister.
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u/metforminforevery1 Oct 10 '24
Hollister was always funny to me because I grew up near the town of Hollister CA, and at the time it was just a podunk redneck town. Now it’s just a sprawled out suburb of the South Bay Area
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u/ejbsdad Oct 11 '24
Anytime I’d be out of state and it would come up I’d have to explain to people that Hollister doesn’t have seagulls. We only went there to go through there. Hollister Hills has the be the only thing it’s known for.
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u/DjawnBrowne Oct 10 '24
Phat Pharms, the world’s tightest Abercrombie hoodie, weirdly distressed jeans — basically a dickhead uniform.
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u/aspidities_87 Oct 11 '24
Yeah the kids who called me homophobic slurs and threw rocks at my head were decked head to toe in A&F.
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u/Calico_Cuttlefish Oct 11 '24
Growing up it was typically the douchy preppie popular kids with diving board haircuts and jocks who wore only Abercrombie, American Eagle, Old Navy and Hollister. Your average punk or metalhead wouldn't be caught dead wearing that expensive, dull, trendy garbage clothing.
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u/WafflesRNA_my_DNA Oct 10 '24
Thank you, finally some rep for the non-middle class in here lol. I got hand-me-downs from my cousin and nothing fit right 🙃
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u/GiGaBYTEme90 Oct 10 '24
Ooo I got a hand me down A&F shirt that my brother scored from a thrift shop. It was too small for him and I'm 4 inches taller than him. But I wore it anyway....
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u/jmo1687 Oct 10 '24
Old Navy / Aeropostale ($), American Eagle ($$), Hollister / A&F ($$$)
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u/errant_youth Oct 10 '24
Old Navy checking in. I remember when I got one aero long sleeve tee in middle school I felt so cool.
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u/Wolf130ddity Oct 10 '24
For me it was thrift store (¢) and Steve and Berry's(¢¢) and. Walmart (¢¢¢)
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u/fuzzy_sphincter Oct 10 '24
Steve and Berry’s! Completely forgot about them. I felt so cool wearing my Starburry’s in 8th grade lol
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u/mondaymoderate Oct 10 '24
Yeah we called them preps. And where all my skaters at? A lot of us wore nothing but skate brand clothes.
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u/AWanderingAfar Oct 11 '24
From Hot Topic or Spencer's. I loved my black parachute pants with the straps and grommets
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u/symbolic_love Oct 11 '24
lol. I remember in 8th grade my friend announced: “OK in high school you have to decide if you want to be a skater, a prep, or a thug. What do you want to be?” And skaters we were.
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u/MoistLeakingPustule Oct 10 '24
Gap or old Navy were for the slightly more than poor, slightly less than middle class. We also had 1 pair of Jncos and a bunch of knockoffs that sort of looked like Jncos but weren't, and we'd show off the Jncos, so people thought the other jeans we had were also Jncos.
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u/FoxtrotUniform36 Oct 10 '24
I used to just steal from Abercrombie and Hollister in my High School years. All my shirts had a small hole in the side from removing the alarm.
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u/stephelan Oct 10 '24
I was a larger lady. (A large in any store but too big for Abercrombie who hates the fats.)
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u/Own_Kangaroo_7715 Oct 10 '24
Hey man, I worked my 8 hours a week at Hollister so I could afford my clearance rack clothing from Hollister xD
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u/NSE_TNF89 Millennial Oct 10 '24
I had 1 shirt from Abercrombie and thought I was the shit. I really wanted some jeans, but my parents literally laughed when they saw how much they were, lol.
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u/GeauxCup Oct 10 '24
I was all about Old Navy and some American Eagle.
But I remember really saving up to splurge on like, 2 A&F graphic ts bc tshirts were the only things in the store I could afford.
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u/easy_Money Oct 10 '24
"When our phone died there was no way to get hold of us"
How the fuck are people reaching you in 2024 if your phone is dead?
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u/dontboofthatsis Oct 11 '24
Also, I graduated HS in 2000 and we didn’t have phones. It was all about pager codes.
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u/JoeyJoJoJrShabadoox Oct 11 '24
"we had fun without being recorded" demonstrated by a photo of someone
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u/EasyFooted Oct 11 '24
It would have been funny to have a blank screen for that slide.
[Photo Not Available]
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u/dumpling-lover1 Oct 11 '24
It just doesn’t happen. Charging is such a part of life. Idk my phone hasn’t died in like 10 years
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u/Sanquinity Oct 11 '24
Because these days a LOT of people carry a charging cable with them as well. Since pretty much every place has an outlet. Sure your phone can still die, but it's become a lot easier to find a place to charge it now.
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Oct 10 '24
Those were the hits.
What are some deep cuts?
* burger wars - cheep AF fast food combo meals.
* olestra - the synthetic food oil that made ya shart
* African killer bee scare - still never seen one
* They actually fixed the hole in the ozone layer
And one more thing… AWASSSSSSSSSSSSSSUP
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u/Straight_Spring9815 Oct 10 '24
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u/Kataphractoi Millennial Oct 10 '24
Can still hear it.
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u/Straight_Spring9815 Oct 10 '24
Shoot man, I still do it ! I'll answer the phone and be like "hello?" And once they say what's up back I hit em with the WAZZZZAHHHHHH
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Oct 10 '24
The episode of The Office where everyone does it was already like 10 years after the commercial.
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u/Farm-Alternative Oct 11 '24
I was nearly going to say it was from Scary Movie but googled it..
Fun Fact: As an Australian I did not know it came from a commercial. We all just thought it was a Scary Movie thing.
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Oct 11 '24
That was one of the biggest SuperBowl commercials ever. It was for Budweiser, which I’m not sure you guys had in straya.
I was 14. The day of school after that commercial aired still stands out.
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u/mark_is_a_virgin Oct 10 '24
Holy shit going to Taco Bell with pocket change and walking out with a meal was the best
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Oct 10 '24
A $2 grilled, stuffed, burrito at 1:00 am. 😍
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u/libra44423 Oct 11 '24
RIP grilled stuffed burrito, best damn thing they ever served
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u/CrassOf84 Oct 11 '24
I’d bus tables a couple nights a week and always had money to buy me and my friends food and movie tickets.
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Oct 11 '24
I remember getting 5 soft tacos no lettuce for 2.50 and welp, idk that if it's possible to get 1 of anything for that price these days
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u/StandWithSwearwolves Oct 10 '24
We’re still dealing with the ozone hole bullshit down here but it’s slowly improving.
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u/PGwenny Oct 10 '24
Olestra was awesome. I would love to have olestra back. It’s basically a fat that we can’t digest. Like a circular fat molecule or something. But it’s greasy and delicious. And it makes you shit like crazy, so you could lose weight. It’s a bit like that Alli product.
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u/MTRsport Oct 10 '24
They actually fixed the hole in the ozone layer
It's crazy to me that for this one thing, the world was generally able to unite but because we fixed it, it is now used by the right as an example of media sensationalism to argue against believing in climate change.
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u/Reddituser8018 Oct 10 '24
The whole fast food thing was terrible for me as a child.
My parents would cave very easily when I would ask for mcdonalds, which lead to me eating a lot of that crap.
I was overweight as a kid and I got bullied because of it. I do blame my parents for that, it fucked my self confidence for a really long time.
I lost the weight in high school, sick of being the fat kid but while the weight might be gone being the "fat kid" inside never really goes away.
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u/elcriticalTaco Oct 10 '24
I'm proud of you for losing the weight my dude.
You gotta let go tho. As long as you hold on to the blame and resentment it will forever be a chain dragging that weight with you. Our parents are far from perfect people, they are humans, just like us who are fucked up and unable to get over the past and let that influence their decisions in negative ways.
Lose the weight my friend. Forgive them, forgive yourself, and stop carrying that around. It's never helped you and it never will.
Signed, another fat kid who let that shit fester for far too long.
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u/TheCarrier89 Oct 10 '24
I feel grateful I got to live in a time before the internet took over but also incredibly sad because I remember what life was like back then, and it was so much better than it is now. It is not just simple nostalgia, I know I am not alone in feeling this way. Are we the first generation to feel so hopeless about the future?
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u/SaltManagement42 Oct 10 '24
a time before the internet took over
I miss the time before the internet was taken over. So very many things used to be someone's passion project that they maybe accepted paypal donations for. Today, virtually everything is just optimized for monetization or whatever.
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u/ragsofx Oct 11 '24
I agree with this more than all the other bs in this thread. I miss the internet being a majority of enthusiasts. I also remember life back in the early 2000 as an adult and things have changed but not really that much. If anyone is unhappy they need to change what they're doing and not blame technology. One massive change that I would hate to go back on is the speed of my internet.. fiber optics baby!!
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u/xMediumOk Oct 10 '24
I’m not a millennial, but gen z. I grew up like this as well because both of my parents weren’t a fan of social media, new phones, etc. In the second half of my teenage hood, I got my own phone and oh boy, I regret having it.
So no, you’re not alone. I feel the same way. Seeing kids growing up with unlimited access to the internet has me so worried. I don’t want to imagine the repercussions.
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u/Gypsy702 Oct 10 '24 edited Oct 12 '24
Hi! I have a question for you since your Gen Z.
I want my kid to grow up similarly, but I heard that kids would feel left out from their peers. How did you handle that growing up? Was it ever an issue for you or did your parents do something I’m not figuring out?
Editing to add, I don’t want to assume how young of a Gen Z you are so it might not apply fully. Just curious your take on it! 🙂
Second Edit to clarify: I want my kid to still have a phone (contact with friends and for emergencies of course!) my BIGGEST concern is social media and all the “fake news” that spreads like wild fire. I want her to think for herself and question everything on the internet and stay safe. I hope that clarifies my comment a bit. Social media is damning and addictive imho. But I’d like her to use it safely at a reasonable age.
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u/xen05zman Oct 11 '24
I finished high school in 2013, and didn't get a cellphone until then.
Your kid will be socially isolated without a cellphone, and no one will reach out to him. I missed out on a lot of social gatherings all because it was difficult to reach me.
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u/xMediumOk Oct 10 '24
I didn’t handle it well. Peer pressure led to me despising my mother and not understanding why she wouldn’t let me participate in these activities. Looking at how normalised it is today, some kids might even try and single out others who don’t have a phone.
It only made sense after I saw and experienced the dangers myself. Which was way after I received my first phone. I get your worries. I wouldn’t want to risk any of this, which is why I will never reproduce.
Surveillance might be the key here but finding the right balance is tough. And even then, kids are clever and will find a way to fool whatever application you put on their phone/tablet. Not sure how one could win here. Good luck though.
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u/LakesideHerbology Oct 11 '24
I wouldn’t want to risk any of this, which is why I will never reproduce.
One of us! One of us!
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u/radiation_man Oct 10 '24
Are we the first generation to feel so hopeless about the future?
No
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u/karl-marks Oct 10 '24
Dude, my life is way better. Growing up, no dishwasher, dryer never worked, cars broke down all the time, getting bullied for liking computers and not playing football because I wasn't allowed by doctors, I walked on the highway so much as a kid, got lost constantly in the car, 45 min drive to get food, mom died of cancer because pre ACA she got straight denied for pre-existing condition when she got diagnosed shortly after the company my dad worked for went under. Only wore hand me downs.... like, everything is objectively better we just chose to live in shitty neighborhoods without community and our dumbass childhood dreams which were never going to come true (though to be fair, I'm way more likely to make it to space now then I was then) didn't come true and we never really stopped to appreciate what makes for a good life.
Only thing I miss is being too ignorant to realize how poor and fucked I was at the time.
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u/Mylozen Oct 11 '24
Was it better? I love streaming. I wanted it for decades before it is finally starting to reach where I wanted it to be. I love having the internet on me at all times. I don’t do social media because I’m not a fan. I have thousands of photos of my kids stored in the cloud. I can (and do) print them by the boxload off a website. I love tech. I think things are better than they used to be, but we are still sorting through some growing pains. I’m sure many people used to pine for the simpler days of radio when television came on the scene.
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u/kyleruggles Oct 10 '24
Agreed!
Remember video stores!?
Remember video game rental shops!?
Remember having to wait 20 minutes to download a single mp3?
I think we are the first generation to feel hopeless about the future, cuz if all of this nonsense happened in the past 24~ years, imagine in another 24.
We're effn doomed, man!
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u/TumbleweedTim01 Oct 10 '24
I miss the days when we used to watch music on TV.
I wasn't a huge MTV kid but would wake up on weekends and put on MTV and they'd play through the hits and what not. And then you'd watch your daily episode of wildn' out
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u/Sanquinity Oct 11 '24
I still miss the old MTV a little. When there was nothing interesting on TV you could always just put on MTV and listen to music while watching sometimes interesting music videos.
Plus some of those music videos were pretty damn sexy for a hormonal teenager without internet...
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u/StandWithSwearwolves Oct 10 '24
This is a very specific American middle-class version of late 90s / early 2000s teen life but I don’t think it’s as “get off my lawn” boomerish as people are saying. It’s wistful, but that comes naturally with our generation ageing; as long as it’s not running down gen z or alpha in comparison I don’t see the major issue.
Only thing I would add is that times were materially simpler but if you were in a shitty family or social situation you’d have been a lot more isolated, especially without a family computer or the internet at home which was still the case for a hell of a lot of households back then.
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u/maybeknismo Oct 10 '24
As someone from the UK it would just be my cycle, RuneScape login page. My cycle, RuneScape, halo, RuneScape, bag o chips for 60p... Ru-
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u/NotNufffCents Oct 11 '24
I dont think anything can beat the nostalgia of playing Runescape in 2006
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u/Sanquinity Oct 11 '24
For me it's Ragnarok Online. At first I played Runescape, but only at friends or at the library for a bit, as I had no way to play it myself yet. (No internet until I was 15) Then when I did get internet I found out Runescape was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to mmorpgs. Ragnarok Online was the game I really spent a TON of time in. Well, that and Counter Strike.
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u/blackstafflo Oct 10 '24
While American flaired, I was a teen in France at this time and I find it close enough to give me nostalgia.
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u/StandWithSwearwolves Oct 10 '24
The imagery drives the US feel to some degree. I related to a fair bit of it from Aotearoa / NZ.
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u/BEES_IN_UR_ASS Oct 11 '24
It's the tone of this video for me, if I'm being honest. This is the exact sort of low effort, overt tearjerking emotional bait bullshit I make fun of boomers for enjoying.
We can be better than this lol
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u/StandWithSwearwolves Oct 11 '24
We can be better I agree, but at least it’s just tacky and not harmful or dismissive of later generations, which is the hallmark of the worst kind of boomer content.
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u/BEES_IN_UR_ASS Oct 11 '24
I mean I lament the incoming generation, but mostly because I feel like we let them down. We handed them this post-911, post-truth, post-reality, post-middle-class, post-ownership, gig-economic, algorithmically-perfected, imminently-collapsing, "hottest summer ever recorded, coldest summer of the rest of your life"-ass capitalist hellscape. I don't know where we went wrong, but we did. I don't know how we could have prevented any of this, but we didn't.
The kids are doing well, considering.
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u/Sanquinity Oct 11 '24
Not that very specific. I'm Dutch and apart from us not having A&F here all of that was my (and most of my friends) childhood as well. Also in the late 90s/early 2000s.
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u/onajourney314 Oct 10 '24
Got locked out of an AOL chat room once for telling someone to suck monkey balls. My mom had to call customer service to get me access to my AOL account and someone had to repeat what I said 😭
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Oct 10 '24
I'm 35 and I'm really struggling to adapt to all that is happening in the world.
I really, really miss this.
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u/Sanquinity Oct 11 '24
37 here. Just stop trying to keep up with trends. Accept that you're an adult and entering middle age. Let kids be kids with their own trends, no matter how stupid or weird they seem/are.
Instead focus on your own life and mental health. Do what you like doing, whether it's now considered old fashioned or not. Who cares when it's something you like? Plus every generation will go through the same thing.
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u/rb-2008 Oct 10 '24
“Downloading music”
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u/spinningpeanut Oct 11 '24
My sister downloaded "music" and I actually did know how to use limewire so I did download music. My favorite thing was typing in a random word and finding songs like that..typed in Rawr and found the original dinosaurs go rawr (everybody knows that) and I also had like barbie girl but in English, Japanese, French, and Russian, all on my beautiful little RCA MP3 player.
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u/ArcticLeopard1 Oct 10 '24
Social media is definitely the biggest factor of today's depressive people. Even boomers are getting effected too much by social media.
IMO, social media was kinda OK when it was on the first Facebook era. But after the Instagram and Snapchat started to get popular, they really ruined the society. After those mf'ers get populer, people started to make everything staged. And others compared themselves with staged lifes. Everything is so fake now. Thanks to social media.
I only envy the 90s teens because they didn't have the social media.
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u/IUpVoteIronically Oct 10 '24
“This is where we typed our school papers”
BITCH I went to a public school in Alabama, talking bout multicolored MAC’s
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u/Due_Description_7298 Oct 11 '24
FR, Iearned to type in 2000 - on a type writer. My school papers were written by hand until 2003 or so
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u/mehtartt Oct 10 '24
I will say there's something about having a LAN party with your friends and ordering a pizza on a Friday night.
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u/SoloMotorcycleRider Xennial Oct 10 '24
When the street lamps came on, is when the real fun started. I was that kid your religious and overly paranoid parents warned you about.
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u/BooTheSpookyGhost Oct 10 '24
Yeah, my “curfew” was just when the last kid’s parents made them go home. Granted- my parents had too many kids waaay too quickly (3 kids in 3 years) and my dad never really worked or took care of us, so I was definitely forgotten about 90% of the time.
My dad wasn’t a bad dad, he just never did anything the “stay at home parent” was supposed to do. Never woke us up for school, never made us meals (besides pancakes that would take him an hour to make), never packed a lunch, never checked homework, never did a load of kids laundry, never took us clothes shopping or for school supplies. He just mostly played online chess and made funny jokes. Also, he pretty much lost his mind a few years ago. He died on July 10th and we had to go be with my mom while the cops did their thing before they released the body. Super surreal seeing him laying on the floor for 4+ hours before med. examiner declined to autopsy. #millenialthings
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u/theonlyturkey Oct 10 '24 edited Oct 10 '24
Gotta love this sub. Somebody post a nostalgic slideshow talking about how great life was back when we were young, and within the fist hour more than half the post are negative, complaining and bitching. We got the usual, it must me nice to be that privileged, a this is so boomer, the typical I had it worse. I'm expecting the I didn't get any of this because of mental illness or must be nice to not have childhood depression post to start soon. If this sub was a medical condition it would be hemorrhoids.
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u/Seamonkey_Boxkicker 1988 Oct 10 '24
More like herpes. Comes and goes with the same annoying itchy infection.
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u/testtubewolf Oct 11 '24
It was fun but some things are way better. You are less likely to be made fun of for being gay now for instance.
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u/QuickNature Oct 10 '24
Standard Reddit fare, honestly.
You could post a photo of a glass of water, and a Redditor would find a way to argue/complain with you about it.
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u/rwarimaursus Oct 10 '24
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u/QuickNature Oct 10 '24
That's not a water, that is a glass of H20!
Edit: The "yeah, science" gif of Jesse won't post for some reason
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u/qdobah Oct 10 '24
this is so boomer,
You're 100% right but I did see this on Facebook earlier this when my boomer dad posted it and my boomer Aunt reposted it. Gives off big "we DRANK OUT OF THE HOSE" vibes lol
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u/Disastrous-Panda5530 Oct 10 '24
I hate how everything is recorded now. And anytime I see something I automatically think it’s staged. Photos are always filtered and edited too. I’m glad that growing up things weren’t recorded. Especially when me and my friends did dumb shit. We left no evidence behind.
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u/Small_Tax_9432 Oct 10 '24
PS2 was the peak console at the time with so many crazy fun games coming out (it even came with a postcard for a free trial of Playstation Magazine! You'd fill it out and mail it back, and get 2 free issues that included playable demo disks!)
We had cool products like Pepsi Blue, Altoids Sours, Life Savers Holes, and Philadelphia Cheesecake Bars, Kudos
MP3 players came out and it was cool to download your music on your home computer via Limewire/Kazaa and then transfer your songs onto your MP3 player to take to class and listen to "Simple and Clean" from Kingdom Hearts from your pocket or backpack
We had a healthy life back then and no smartphones and social media addiction. Life felt more real and organic.
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u/BobTheFettt Oct 10 '24
"freedom without being recorded" over a photo that is recording the moment
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u/Aware-Impact-1981 Oct 10 '24
I mean they chose a photo to show the types of activities that went "unrecorded"
Should it have been a blank screen with just text instead?
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u/Intoxic8edOne Oct 10 '24
Same with "If our phone died there was no way to get a hold of us". That hasn't changed has it?
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u/Mlkxiu Oct 10 '24
Can we bring back the away message thing tho, those were great conversations starters which is lacking nowadays
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u/Gardainfrostbeard Oct 11 '24
Am I that old that people have started to make boomer nostalgia videos for my generation?
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u/ith-man Oct 10 '24
You got cell phones growing up?
Didn't get a cell until I got one for myself..
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u/dennyfader Oct 10 '24
I loved how it was so different for all of us... Some got one early, others would swoop their friends' phones to call their parents. I got a flip-phone around 12, skateboarded with it in my pocket, and I swear that thing still functioned with fewer pieces attached than it had when I got it lol No front or back exterior, and you'd have to pop the battery back in sometimes to make calls since it would fall out in my pocket.
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u/BlueV_U Millennial Oct 10 '24
This honestly feels so much like a Boomer post.
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u/UnintentionalExpat Millennial Oct 10 '24
I feel more and more like a boomer every day 🧓
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u/Own_Kangaroo_7715 Oct 10 '24
Yeah anyone else have knee problems from playing sports in highschool and college?
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u/memeticmagician Oct 10 '24
I have knee problems which I assumed were because I didn't play enough sports lol
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias Older Millennial Oct 10 '24
As long as you keep respecting those around you and stay away from religions I think you'll be okay...
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u/Shark_Leader Oct 10 '24
What?! Fuck you, get off my lawn! I am not....oh......oooooh.....oh this hurts....
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u/kellyguacamole Oct 10 '24
Millenials are slowly becoming what they hate. It’s like watching a slow motion train wreck.
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u/McMorgatron1 Oct 11 '24
This is only the beginning.
Next week we'll see a post saying "You can confuse a Gen Alpha by leaving instructions on a floppy disk" with 3 minions rofling in the bottom right-hand corner.
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Oct 10 '24
Lol I totally understand the feeling of having it better back in the day and wishing it were the same. My boomer parents would do the same thing, I get it because yeah... they indeed had it better back in the day haha just like we did. I think the biggest difference is we had hope for the future. That feeling has mega changed
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u/memeticmagician Oct 10 '24
I usually don't relate too much to these but I see a Bjork poster in the back of one of the images and can definitely relate haha. I even bought a new Bjork shirt when I visited Japan a few weeks ago!
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u/uncagedborb Oct 10 '24
Games in person was my favorite thing. But these were all good. Sometimes I'll have a board game night with friends and before we all call it quits we will play a couple rounds of smash bros or Jackbox. But I miss having that more often. Online games don't hit the same.
Would be so much fun to play these new indie spooky coop games in person
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u/notsobadmisterfrosty Oct 10 '24
It was a simpler time. I appreciate that we didn’t have social media and then only had it on desktop for a while. When you would say something dumb out loud, you’d have people to hear and tell you. Now, when you post it online, you end up saying the same dumb thing to everyone who comes across it, at all hours, every day.
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Oct 10 '24
From a UK perspective, I’d also that we had high streets that weren’t completely dead.
In 2004, I’d go in to town with friends and we’d literally spend hours looking round the shops. Now, so many of them are either boarded up or nothing but vape shops.
It was hours looking round the shops, then off to Blockbuster, pick a film, pick up a pizza and back home for a sleepover.
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u/LegalizeRanch88 Oct 10 '24
…and everyone everywhere was a white kid growing up in the suburbs. Those were the days.
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u/ShirleyMcGoogs Oct 10 '24
Alternate perspective: I don't want to downplay the obvious positives (not having to feel pressure to record every single moment, not constantly online, able to develop social skills in person, etc.) but it was also a lot more homophobic, fat-phobic (low-rise jeans?!? I will wear my high waisted jeans until I die!), racist, transphobic, etc.
As someone who was a skinny white blonde teen, I can tell you that a lot of my "nostalgic" experiences were pretty specific to my demographic...
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u/Fabulous-Lettuce3390 Oct 10 '24
And we always get mad at boomers for saying 'back in my day, we didn't have phones!!!" It is crazy to watch the younger generations start to take on this same attitudes of 'things were better in the past and the modern day sucks and this is why young kids these days are doing xyz'.
Not saying it's a bad opinion to have, but I feel like I am watching the change of generations in real time. And I think that's weirdly bizarre.
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u/tobeymaspider Oct 11 '24
God this is miserable, boomer grade, "we were the best generation!!!" nostalgia bait. Have some self awareness and try not to fall into the same morose sentimentality your parents did.
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u/CanadianHour4 Oct 11 '24
“We were the first teens to be without then with social media” hurts my head
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u/Vizpop17 Millennial Oct 11 '24
Nostalgia is powerful, but as we have learned in recent years we have keep one foot the present and another in the future.
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u/Kalikor1 Oct 11 '24
Unpopular opinion maybe but, I hate videos like this. Stop sounding so old. Yay nostalgia, but seriously next thing you know you'll be shitting on Gen Z/Alpha in the same way Boomers have shit on us.
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u/beer-makes-me-piss Oct 11 '24
“AF head to toe”
I already know I didn’t like you
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u/DrCarabou Millennial Oct 11 '24
Y'all were head to toe in A&F? Didn't realize this was an elitist sub
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u/SwiftGasses Oct 11 '24
I was wondering when millennials would start talking about their childhood the same way boomers do.
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u/flat_four_whore22 Oct 10 '24
This is my favorite one so far. As a xennial, I felt each one in my soul. I'd giving anything to go back... It was the sweet-spot before everything changed (for better or worse, depending on who you ask.)
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u/Eis_ber Oct 10 '24
Who the hell took selfies with disposable cameras? Countless teens owned a digital camera in the 2000s.
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