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At first I was like wtf is with this author. I’m millenial/gen z and even I remember what we did. TV, books, and calling your friends on your wired phone attached to the wall.
But as I read the article, I kinda get it. There was a ton of down time and boredom. However, I disagree that the nothingness was this horrible thing. I think the “nothing ever happens” is what our brains handle much better than “there’s too much happening.”
Our brains literally can’t process the firehose of information streaming into our eyeballs 24/7 365. It starts to go in your eyes and right out your ears. My memory is shit now. I’m forgetting important stuff because it keeps getting deleted to make room for more garbage data like endless dank memes and posts. I think the nothingness, along with REM sleep (which is also disrupted by screens), is what’s needed to help process and therefore retain new information.
I’m trying to spend less time on screens because it feels like dementia and it’s freaking me out.
I remember reading an article saying the creativity that comes only after you experience profound boredom is what we’ve lost. We have so many options so easily available, the next dopamine hit is only ever minutes away a lot of people never need to make it past superficial boredom
I was, and still am, fine with my own thoughts. I intentionally go places without my phone that I know I’ll be standing around waiting. Bus stop to pick up my kid, restaurant to grab lunch, quick trip to the store. It’s nice not having the option to distract myself with it and the feeling of being entirely disconnected knowing if “something terrible happened” I wouldn’t be able to reach anyone instantly is a lot more calming than it sounds.
Meditated / mindfulness more. Listened to radio/music more. Collected physical media to play in cars or tv players. Physical books! For me, smartphones have only filled in small gaps while waiting, when I retire looking forward to getting rid of it. Personal social media has never worked for me, I can’t really create new connections this way. It’s all just temporary garbage fluff!
It’s interesting, mindfulness and meditation really weren’t that popular, at least in a mainstream way, before smartphones got popular. I feel like a big part of why it blew up was pretty much because people were feeling overwhelmed with modern multitasking and needed an outlet.
I was smaller but I had a glimpse of the life before smartphones. The generation before any kind of widespread telephony is dying out but since then, people called each other a lot, like a lot a lot. They watched TV in the mornings and evenings, ran errands, read the paper, went to bars, hobby clubs and nightclubs, cafes. We still do that now, but you have to make a concious effort to avoid using a computer or smartphone.
So many passes, cards and memberships are now digital, I kind of miss the feel of carrying plastic and paper cards.
We also had books, and we still do.
Just yesterday, on a bus, among a sea of people on their smartphones and a kid with a tablet, I saw a young lady reading a book.
Some people still watch TV in the mornings and evenings, during breakfast and dinner.
Reading the paper is probably what’s mostly been replaced by smartphones.
Reading books, listening to music or just getting on with things - but there were definitely replacements for modern mobile social media. Sending long SMS messages, or before that, email, or before that, physical snail mail or spending hours on a wired landline phone talking to someone. Occasionally using an internet cafe or satellite phone. Chatting, messaging or gaming on BBS’s. And so on.
My parents kept Easyrider Magazine on the back of the toilet since my mom worked there (accounting or collections or something). Sure as a teen you’re a horn ball, but since it had been there for most of my life boobs kinda didn’t hold the magic (kinda).
Edit for clarification: it was mostly a biker lifestyle magazine. It had pictures of boobs but it was mostly about Harleys and biking.
Personally, I always used to carry a paperback with me and would read in the odd moments that this writer seems to recall as being so dull and soul destroying. I still do carry e-books on my phone of course and use them in exactly the same way - but also with the option of doomscrolling, of course.
As for TV, I was never one for TV - or radio - as background noise. With fiends, I had a bit of reputation of going round and turning such things off when I entered the room, so that we could talk without distraction. I would ask them first, of course.
I like this article. It reminds me of what growing up was like. I didn’t own any phone until I was 22 — when I was forced to buy one because I had moved to another country…and for work.
I had a weekly TV schedule. I loved it. I only had 3 channels. We called it the TFC (Three Fuckin’ Channels) or the Welfare Network. There was a forth channel, but you had to move the antenna and I wasn’t gonna do that. If you missed your show you were screwed. Mealtimes were planned around TV.
We rented two movies every weekend from a shop that doubled as an appliance store. We also rented video games.
We had subscriptions to magazines. Nintendo Power, EGM, National Geographic… something about dinosaurs.
We rode bikes. We swam. No parental supervision. We were latchkey kids. We mowed lawns and used power tools and our parents didn’t bat an eye.
At university we used ICQ but basically if we organised an event and said we were coming…that meant we were coming. If someone wanted to talk they’d come see if you were home or meet you at meal hall.
About 16 years later
My best friends and I spend months playing phone tag in order to hang out for 90 minutes and down a beer. When we hang out we need to make sure to turn off our phones. Our partners ask for updates every 15 minutes.
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I read books, played games on consoles, watched TV, phoned my friends (over landline), pursued hobbies, and did random shit like seeing how many different ways I could stack a group of plastic cups. People like to shit-talk boredom, but it’s good to be bored occasionally.
The power supply in my desktop tower shit itself a few months ago and I spent a week without an internet device. There was a fair amount of boredom as I realized how neglected meatspace had become in my area, but this was also a week of peak productivity since I no longer had a nagging feeling of having something better to do all the time. Honestly, it was nice. It’s more convenient to have internet access, but disconnecting is nice.
