Life before social media and smartphones, what was it like?

Life before social media and smartphones, what was it like?

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There was just no social media and smartphones back then.

What the fuck did you even expect?

The same as it is now, AFTER social media.

>Still using FB, etc. shiggy

Better.

/thread

Like early-to-mid 2000's?

I would say it was a good balance of everyone having instant communication (cellphone and text) but not to the point where it consumed a majority of your day.

Internet was also way better. A lot more original content, and groups were separated into different niche websites. Everyone used an online handle, nickname, fake name whatever you want to call it and things were way less personal.

>carry piece of paper in wallet
>write down EVERYTHING on his paper
>friends phone numbers
>calling card numbers
>job references
>directions to random shit

>list gets used so much that a new one must be made every 6 months or so

less superficial

I used to carry a nokia and a palm pilot. Pretty good combo served me well between 2000 and 2010. I grew up before internet or even personal computers. Life was good we read more magazines, talked on the phone, used to meet up and hang out.

Purer.

More fun since y'all are retarded.

Then.
>dream of a connected future techno paradise where everyone has access to knowledge

Now
>everyone has the ability to communicate with anyone at any time and has sum total of human knowledge in pocket
>use it to spy on everyone and shitpost on the internet

This is the correct answer. Social media as we know it today are cancer. I wish we never had them. Todays high speed Internet without social everything would be nice.

What's it like to have a smartphone and social media?

Like a shit.

>used to meet up and hang out.
I think kids still do this; you're just old.

Not being bothered constantly, not seeing hundreds of thousands of selfies and worthless options every year.

that time was the sweet spot of the internet.

Women actually socialized with men instead of traveling around with their girlfriends looking for cool instagram photo opportunities.

You had to memorize the phone numbers of people you gave enough of a shit about to want to call. When you went out, nobody would know where you were unless you told them and they couldn't get in touch with you unless they went to find you in person or waited for you to call them back from your home phone.

The internet was the wild west. Corporate presence was minimal to nonexistent, there was almost no advertising, and nothing was centralized. The concept of vlogging didn't exist, nobody posted dozens and dozens of pictures of themselves doing mundane shit, and if you wanted to talk to other people you had to find message boards (which were almost always confined to a narrow range of topics and had small communities) or use chatrooms. Nobody used their real name for anything, ever. The very idea of a website like Facebook where everyone has their real first/last name, city of residence, workplace, etc. listed for whoever to see would make heads explode.

socializing being reduced to nothing but girls trying to find cute photo opportunities for their instagram is incredibly annoying

it's like going to a concert and then watching it through your phone while recording, it destroys the immediacy of the experience

Going outside to park to play basketball or bike outside in park.

Going to library to rent books/movies/use computers.

Buying VHS/DVD videos and renting from Blockbuster stores.

Hmmm landlines.

Families would eat dinner together at dinner tables.

>it's like going to a concert and then watching it through your phone while recording, it destroys the immediacy of the experience

Yeah, that's pretty strange. Instead of experiencing the moment people like to capture it just so they can either post it or forget it forever. What I also find pretty strange is that people meet but then look at their phones all the time

>"reddit is a circlejerk"
>this thread
Really gets the neurotransmitters going.

>I think
Look around your neighborhood during daylight hours and tell me how many kids you see playing in the streets.

Protip: You can't.

I live in a neighborhood that's walking distance from three different schools. Right now it's summer vacation. Yesterday after I got off work I walked down the street to get the mail. I was the only person outside. It was dead silent. Shit's weird.

God I really miss no smartphones.

I was printing out cheat codes

I still live in the early 2000s mentally.

>No socials
>no apps
>only browse off a desktop
>write shit down on pieces of paper
>never take any pictures

Having said that, it's quite lonely.
I miss the actual years.
Turns out the 3rd millennium sucks

I think it's great. I was an indoor person as a kid because kids were outside. Now that kids are inside I'm actually enjoying my time outside.

Kids should just be locked into little cells until they're adults.

Playing Dota and Counter-Strike with my friends.

I like how no one bothered to inquire about OP's picture. When did Sup Forums become infested with literal faggots.

It's ass. Since I was 11 I've seen literally hundreds of thousands of asses, and you expect us to get all riled up and pubescent over this one?
Are you 12?

It's a very sad and melancholic picture user.
It reminds me of my lost youth, of hopes that never came true.
Of that warm summer dusk when you felt like you had all your life in front of you, and the girl at your side was all that it mattered.
And it's a thread about old times, so most people posting could likely be their fathers.

Proving my point.

Someone needs to get laid.

A fuckload better than this. You could actually talk to people. You could have a conversation with girls instead of today when all they do is stare at their phones. Getting a postcard from someone on holidays felt infinitely better than a Facebook update.

I'm 12, the post

Postcards were great, I loved getting them and I loved sending them during those rare times when I got to go on vacation.

I'm gay, the post.

Playing Trackmania with friends over MSN.
Websites were infinitely more varied, forums everywhere, usernames, no e-celeb whores.
Cellphones were way cooler, everyone had a different one.

So you are twelve. You're literally derailing a thread about life before smartphones because you can't contain your puberty.

>typing all this meaningless shit when you could've just said "nice ass"
wew lad

I'm now officially sad

found someone who wasn't conscious until the 2000s
meme culture obviously not mainstream, people were less insecure, weren't redpilled, more active, productive, conversational, better memory, higher rates of literacy, not as inflated sense of self/purpose..and uh, yep.

Social media would still be good if it had no photos (ie, no memes)

It was black and white. I've heard they didn't invent colors yet.

As far as social media, hard to say. I'm a privacy advocate which means when I post on the web, I do so anonymously. Nothing I do traces back to me personally (and you can do this with almost anything if you know what you're doing). I was pretty much mostly alone before social media and not much has changed.

Now smart phones and (more importantly) tablets have changed EVERYTHING. It's fucking insane all I can do on a small 10in device thinner than most of my books, even with the case covering it. Unlimited manga, books, magazines, movies/tv shows, and pretty much 90% of what I do on my desktop.

See kids, there was this thing we used to experience called "boredom". It's where you literally have nothing to do and enjoy. You just exist and wait for time to move on in the hopes of something interesting eventually happening. That time is long gone.

I used to get directions off of mapquest and print them out on paper to take into my car when I didn't know how to get somewhere. My parents thought it was crazy you could get directions like that, they wanted to do everything on maps you'd pick up at a gas station.

You could only tell when movies were on by either going to the theater, or opening a local newspaper and going to the page with the movie times on it.

Once upon a time it was like that, we called it Livejournal/Blogspot/Xanga. Myspace was what ushered in the era of spamming photos.

it was better and less autistic.

>opening a local newspaper and going to the page with the movie times on it.
Yes, and watching trailer on tv was exciting, and then talking f2f with your friends about what to watch and when to go to the movies.

youtube.com/watch?v=Jqu1Erh5veU

>people unironically believing 10-15 years ago was good.

>wait for time to move on in the hopes of something interesting eventually happening

Or you'd phone your best friends on your family's house phone, that was attached to a base by a cord that then plugged into the wall, and was especially cool if you could get more than one other person on at once, but that was only available if you paid for it, and you'd bike to go meet up with them somewhere and be bored/spend your allowance together.

>What was life like before Sup Forums?

>10-15 years ago was good.
It was better for sure.
And the 90s were even better.

>it was better
yeah, nah.

- you had to write shit down

- when meeting up with a friend you had agree on a place and time.

- you didn't had your mind going in 8 different directions due to internet addiction.

- Seeing nudity was special compared to the desensitization of today with the abundance of interent porn.

it was a simpler time to be alive user.

Shitty.
>early to mid 2000s
>in fact both social media and smartphones were popular for 5+ years

Much, much, MUCH less convenient but I seemed to have a lot more free time.
Having to go to a goddamned library whenever you wanted to know something was a real bitch. So glad we can just Google things now.

>yeah, nah.
name some stuff that's better now that is not autistic useless shit like computards or iphones or stuff like that.

Or marginal increments over existing stuff.

>going to the library looking for the right book cuz you wanted to settle a bet or needed a recipe, an instruction etc.
>going to a record store and relaxing while listening to LPs or CDs
>listening to radio, making mixtapes with your favorites
>figure shit out by yourself or being taught by others, instead of being spoonfed with tutorials and wiki hows
>driving with someone in the passengers seat reading the map
>spending entire summers outside
>playing vidya on the couch with friends instead of online
>watching TV with the entire family in the living room vs everyone sits by themselves with their phones
>no political correctness, slower pace of daily life, no pressure through social media

It was better socially (local) where you didn't alienate people around you.

Now you have social media, where local people are alienated, people who use social media feel alienated, people who they consider friends (online) are alienated, etc.

Well for starters if you wanted to see pics like that you had to actually find girls willing to do it.

The good part was you got to Fuck them.

it was a dystopia where you couldn't add random bitches on snapchat, and browse their noods when ever you get bored

take me back!

More interpersonal communicating.

Had to go over to the person's house to see if they wanted to hang out or come over to your house to play NES.

None of this "you have an 30 minutes to respond to any email we send you, no matter the time" bullshit businesses do now.

THIS,
I miss that shit.

and also this,
I have the world's knowledge at the palm of my hand and yet I feel like I have less time to do stuff.

>ITT: People who have become old and blame it on the times that supposedly have changed.

It obviously isn't that easy to talk to girls anymore, because you aren't 16 but 30.
And you don't hang out with your friends that often anymore, not because of social media, but simply because they moved on with your life, while you still shitpost on Sup Forums.

Your youth is gone.
Deal with it or cry about it. Your choice.

>Having to go to a goddamned library whenever you wanted to know something was a real bitch. So glad we can just Google things now.

Remember when people owned multi-book encyclopedia collections?

negative nancy

>make plans to meet up with someone in a public place
>you show up first
>if the other person is late, you have two choices: wait longer or give up and go home
>calling one another is not really an option unless both of you just so happen to be near a payphone

>at home, 6 AM
>downloading a single song
>go to school
>come back at 5 PM
>song 75% downloaded

>watching porno
>a single image takes about two full minutes to load
>and that is IF they don't fail before finishing
it was a lot of that type of shit.
good riddens.

remember CD's Encyclopedias?

As opposed to the literal wasteland that was a decade ago? Fuck off, it was boring as fuck back then.

Real and not shallow like today.

>real
the delusion is real alright.

>make plans to meet up with someone in a public place
And now that you can know instantly where anyone is at all times you can't think of many reasons to even meet all of a sudden, except to go through the usual social cliques of eating out, and drinking maybe. Very little to tell to one another except either trying to fill the silence or reminisce about OP times.

>downloading a single song
Now you have all the digital music of the world at your fingertips, but modern music is garbage, and nothing beats the satisfaction of inserting a cd or cassette into the player and hitting play

>watching porno
Now you can spend your nights watching all kinds of fucked up porn to your heart desire, but that fucked you up and desensitized you so much so you have trouble in the bedroom.
Also, you might be gay.

you didn't have to worry about your life being ruined after calling someone a fag on the internet because your name and/or wealth of personal information wasn't stapled to your comments.

>the literal wasteland that was a decade ago
I think we have different POVs because I'm not an austistic neckbeard and actually enjoyed real life and actual social interactions and activities.

While yes, for someone autistic the currentyear is better because he can spend his neet days 24/7 keeping busy on the internet.

SPOILERS: nothing of it is real. It's all pixels and bits and sh1t. You're still alone.

I still have my old Encarta 98 disc. If I still had a CD player on my computer I'd play some mindmaze.

it's as if being accountable for your words is important or something

Yeah, I had Encarta and it's actually how I first got into blues music.

Boredom or tranquility as some may call it was not really much of a problem compared to the thunderstorm of crappy messages,alerts,ads,notifications,tweets which are shat all over your brain 24/7 nowadays. Constant sensory overload causes all kinds of problems....

>my old Encarta 98
me too, somewhere I think. And AOE too

>still alone
uh, I have a girlfriend bud

>Digging through old things, find all these handwritten notes I got from friends and girls during class that I kept

Shit like that still gives me feels, no one exactly scrolls through their text message archives. To this day I have no idea what I did when I didn't have a smart phone. Now it's become my security blanket when I get into an awkward situation or don't quite know how to interact with someone.

It's really not. It's just important to not give a fuck what others think of your words. Everyone is so hyper sensitive now. Used to be you'd call someone a faggot and they'd call you a cocksucker and you'd both go on your way. People forgot how to not give a fuck.

>a girlfriend
both 2d waifus and trap aren't girls user.
Let alone realdolls

you're right about the porn part,
I don't fap to anything vanilla these days,
the girl has to have at least 1 anal scene or I don't bother with it.

>Don't blame the bully, blame the victim mentality
yeah, i'm glad people are being held accountable for their words.

Early 2000s I had a Friendster a Xanga and a bunch of other stuff I signed up for that probably no longer exist. Communicated through AIM, had a Nokia, Walked around with a CD player, had a digital camera. All that is in my pocket now.

Though sharing wasn't really a thing and opinions where kept to oneself. I so I wasn't bombarded with dank memes and political opinions told with as single image 24/7.

>but modern music is garbage, and nothing beats the satisfaction of inserting a cd or cassette into the player and hitting play
nonononono, get the fuck out of here with that nostalgic shit

get the fuck out

>Used to be you'd call someone a faggot and they'd call you a cocksucker and you'd both go on your way.
Bitch that still happens today, every day.

cuck.

>yeah, i'm glad people are being held accountable for their words.
You do know internet bullying is at an all time high right?

On the other hand you can't actually express opinions anymore, because that might get you fired, or doxed, or beaten up.
Simply because they don't fit in the #currentyear, no matter how **polite** you try to be.

That's probably because you're weak and unworthy of passing on your genetics. In the olden days you would have been eaten by a wild hamster or something before you had the chance to poison our genetic makeup. Sadly now people like you can use the internet to find another unaborted disaster.

>On the other hand you can't actually express opinions anymore
Dissenting opinions have been met with opposition for ages. For better or worse it doesn't result in death anymore, in most places.

Facebook is a good definition of social interaction and real life, repeat it with me good goy

>get the fuck out of here with that nostalgic shit
underage or terrible taste?
Even so called "pop" music, being already shit in the early 2000s, has gone downhill.

The rest of the genres, meaning electronic or rock don't even exist anymore.

What if I told you every social interaction today doesn't happen over facebook.