Yeah, we didn’t have TikTok, endless scrolling or instant messaging… and honestly, that “boredom” was kind of amazing
- You’d actually read the back of the cereal box at breakfast.
- Waiting rooms meant flipping through random old magazines.
- Long bus rides = staring out the window, daydreaming.
- Getting lost in a city wasn’t stressful, it was part of the adventure.
That slowness forced you to be present, talk to people, and let your brain wander. Boring? Sure. But it was a good boring.
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OP pretending to be deep, episode 12312037th
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Most popular opinion ever mate, I’m sorry
It really wasn’t that boring, I’d just whip out the old gameboy, and reading shampoo bottles are about the same amount of joy as reading most posts anyway.
I think there are advantages to not having smartphones, but literally none of the things you cited are them. Why do I need to read cereal boxes or random magazines? People did sometimes daydream, but also they crammed just as much with newspapers, magazines, or whatever else. And getting lost was extremely stressful. I consider navigation anywhere to be about the best thing about having a smart phone. Traveling in an unusual place without them, especially on busses, was fucking awful.
I agree with it all expect rhe last point. Now a days a lot of cities have bad parts and you definitely want to avoid them. You don’t want to wonder into a bad area if you don’t have to
At the same time, we were more readily available to meet up in person. We were happy to go the effort of meeting up and that was 1000% better, we were more available to stop and have an actual phone call and that was 100% better. Messaging is fine and better in some circumstances but we’ve lost a lot for it.
As an extention, split screen multiplayer. Online gaming can’t compete with how fun that is.
>Getting lost in a city wasn’t stressful, it was part of the adventure.
It has always been stressful. At least nowadays I can call people who wait for me and tell them I’m going to be late.
As for the rest – you do realize that you can still read the back of the cereal box at breakfast, flipping through random magazines, stare out the bus window, do you? What is stopping you?
Also – you can put your phone in airplane mode. You can ignore text messages. You can choose to not answer instantly when someone calls you, or to not answer at all. You have a choice.
I can safely say that my life was not enriched by reading the back of a cereal box nor was my mind expanded by doing the same maze 12+ times.
I’m the opposite. I still feel that our technological advancements have benefited us in a lot more ways than harmed us. Communication with each other is far easier than ever, being up to date on important news/info is easy, services that required using up days off from work can now be done remotely on a lot of cases, leaving more time to for people to what they want with their time off, etc.
I’m not saying there’s no negatives to this technological world we’re in now (there’s a lot mind you) but the fact that a lot of people that say it would be better to go back before all of this still use their phones and computers regularly kind of says a lot about it. It’s not that it was BETTER. It’s just you have rose colored glasses on when viewing that period and are only coming across a lot of negativity online rather than using the internet as a tool that’s extremely robust.
We now know that boredom is important (especially for children) to fuel the drive for experimentation and creativity. There is nothing worse than beeing entertained 24/7
It wasn’t boring, it was just different. Before smart phones, nobody was really saying “I wish my phone had internet, played music, did video calls, streamed movies…” nobody was saying that because at the time, the thought of phones doing all that was inconceivable. We just lived in the world as it was.
Example…back in the day, maybe right before I graduated high school, phones didn’t have internet, so I’d have to wait until I got home to see who won whatever game. This wasn’t a big deal back then. It just was what it was.
Yeah. There also wasn’t this knee jerk reaction of having something to hide behind
Are like 20?
Yes, life was more exciting without cellphones and the internet. It simply was.
Things meant more because you actually had to take things as they are in real life instead of looking it up on a smartphone.
From an artistic perspective, it’s certainly shifted how we use our imagination. Always-on access to media and the pressure to promote at that pace can fuel one type of artistic growth and creativity, but I think we have sort of lost the slow pace of time and thought that some art benefits from.
Not having social media at our finger tips was an amazing time. It felt like everything we did was more intentional. These days everyone around you at a concert, watching fireworks, or at a monument or landmark is taking pictures or video for social media. You may have done those things before smartphones, but it was so you could print actual photos to keep in a box or album somewhere and share with your loved ones. How many times have people gone to Facebook or Instagram to relive experiences? It’s all just meaningless content now that we forget and move on to the next post once the engagement endorphins subside.
This feels very AI written, which would be hilariously ironic, given the subject matter.
boredom had an element of satisfaction that i miss
You can…still do all these things if you want.
I still remember when I was 12/13 getting my first iPod touch and using google for a few things, and suddenly realizing we have the answer to everything in the palm of our hands now.
The difference between being bored now and then is now your bored with your phone so its ok, but back then we had to do stuff to relieve our boredom
I think its a big reason I still love weed as much as I do. It let’s me be bored enough to just relax and scroll my phone without feeling guilty
One of the things my spouse and I try to do with our kids is to just let them be bored more.
Wasn’t boring at all.
I can’t speak for anyone else’s thoughts, of course. But to me, it seems that smartphones have ended the concept of being alone with your own thoughts.
I see posts about “How could you get through a plane flight without your phone???” And my internal response is, “How can you get through your life without getting to know who you really are inside?”
I do all that (except ofc if there are no magazines which is common today) so its not smartphones, its you.
Getting lost in the city absolutely was stressful tho
I don’t even think it was more boring. We made our own fun. Went out, hung out at each others places playing games and causing some kinda ruckus. We enjoyed the little things more.
There’s nothing stopping anyone from doing any of these things even with smart phones
Exactly! We were bored but that boredom led to creativity. We made up games talked to people face to face and actually had time to think.
In the before times I always brought a book or magazine to read to preempt any downtime. Especially if I knew I had a long ride ahead. My purses were a lot bigger out of necessity. And sometimes my walkman/discman. Remember when backpack had headphone guides?
I was ready to reply that it depends on what you mean by “more boring” until I read the last line. Yes, you had more moments where you faced boredom, but the intensity of that boredom was not as excruciating as it seems to be for folks nowadays. Things were…so.much.calmer.
Tbh I find myself bored now far more often.
Before smartphones I was able to wonder. Now I can’t go to bed without picking up my phone to figure out why chameleons can change colors…
I still enjoy those things more than rubbing on a telephone, so I simply choose to do them instead. Like, nothing stopping you dude.
I had a different experience and what you write feels like romanticising the it. It was annoying to stay home when you waited for a call. Or to wait for your friend/date/whatever and they didn’t come and they couldn’t notify you. Or you couldn’t make it and they weren’t home anymore when you tried to reach them.
Waiting rooms were painfully boring
I had a book and that day’s newspaper
in my bag most of the time. Life also wasn’t slow. I remember having to slog around the streets hunting for payphones to call the office to see where I was going next. Mobile phones eliminated that but they did introduce the “where are you” call from the office manager.
Definitely unpopular.
As an old, I don’t think life before smartphones was all that more boring than now. At breakfast, yes there was the back of the cereal box, but there was also television, newspapers, radio, actual books/comics, etc. Most waiting rooms still have random old magazines, and people brought in books, newspapers, and listened to their walkman. By the 90s there were a variety of decent handheld videogames as well (shitty handhelds were around in the 80s, especially from Tiger). Same on the long bus rides.
The getting lost thing is interesting though. This is something that’s probably going to sharply divide people, as most of the people I knew did not view getting lost as “part of the adventure.” It was something that was annoying at best and brought on the howling fantods at worst. Seriously, I knew people in the 90s that refused to go anywhere they didn’t know for fear of getting lost. Ubiquitous GPS is significantly better.
But mostly, I remember a lot of people doing anything to avoid being present, talking to strangers, and living inside their own heads. I enjoyed it, but most people clearly did not.
It was self regulation.
It may have been good for you, but not for everyone. It would’ve been terrible for those who had trauma and were forced to remember it even more.
No it wasn’t. Kids actually left the house and played with friends outside. People did things for fun, they interacted with people.
There is nothing more boring than scrolling your phone endlessly.