
People who pre-date smartphones have been reminiscing on what younger generations are missing – 17 memories from a simpler time
10.
‘Having fun arguing about daft things that you could solve easily by googling. “Who was the actress in such-and-such?” “What year did that happen?” I miss those daft pub chats.’
-cloutbox8000
11.
‘Reading a shampoo bottle while you’re taking a shit.’
-itspeterj
12.
‘”Mom I’m going to ride my bike” – “Ok honey be back before dinner” – proceed to go and get into absolutely ridiculous and often unsafe situations in places my parents didn’t even know existed while they had zero way of contacting or finding me and my friends.
“How was riding bikes honey?”
“Oh good, we just rode up the bike path to so and so’s house and played some video games” as I’m processing some sort of trauma because we just almost got killed for some reason.’
-whaletacochamp
13.
‘You could go to the record store (or movie rental store), shop for music, and there would be other people there who liked the same music as you. Now the record store is on your phone, and there is nobody in there to talk to.’
-timf3d
14.
‘Getting an actual letter from someone, especially love letters.’
-lisago911
15.
‘Your boss can’t get hold of you if you don’t want them to, and that was perfectly acceptable because it was the norm.
These days many employers expect someone to be available by phone 24/7 and, to me, that’s b.s.’
-MysteriousMrX
16.
‘Born in 78.
Someone brought up what we did on our work breaks before smartphones and that was weirdly kinda nostalgic.
I’d bullshit with coworkers, read a magazine, everyone always had a book on hand. As technology advanced, someone with a gameboy/psp the DS was really popular. But sometimes people would just listen to their ipod.
Not trying to be old man things were better back in my day about it… but just carrying around long form content and utilizing it. Like it was easy and encouraged.
Or you’d get like a 15 minute break at work, couldn’t really go anywhere, so you’d be sitting in the breakroom and just bullshit about the day with other coworkers or get to know them. You were on your break and wanted to relax/unwind so everyone tended to be cordial.’
-supergooduser
17.
‘The joy of slamming a phone receiver down in someone’s ear when they pissed you off. It wasn’t just the “click” of a call disconnecting. There was an actual, loud BANG when you did it. Very satisfying in the moment.
The busy signal that meant you couldn’t reach someone because they were on the phone was frustrating, but looking back at it now, it kept our lives more simple than they are now.’
-Round-Public435