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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by star_wraith@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

Who wants in? We can talk about what is was like to write a letter to your grandma or having no other way to ask someone out other than by calling them on the phone. Or checking out movies at Blockbuster or whatever your national equivalent was (we usually checked out videos at the grocery store, actually).

We’re cool because we can actually remember the USSR and “East” Germany. Although not as cool, I can remember when homophobia and transphobia was so much more widely accepted and the “default” position for most Americans. Not as cool.

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[-] PKMKII@hexbear.net 52 points 11 months ago

40-something here: I hope to live to see the day I am hanged for being cringe and not based.

[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 23 points 11 months ago

Don’t we all

[-] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 20 points 11 months ago

same bestie

[-] operacion_ogro@hexbear.net 15 points 11 months ago

I tell my friends regularly that my retirement plan is to be executed during the Climate Revolutions by their kids for being insufficiently radical

[-] ratboy@hexbear.net 46 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Not old enough to fit in with the oldheads, not young enough to fit in with the zoomers. This is my burden to bear

[-] ikiru@lemmy.ml 13 points 11 months ago

Transitionary Period Club.

[-] ratboy@hexbear.net 15 points 11 months ago

Lollll I hate it. Its perfect

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[-] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 38 points 11 months ago
  • i used to have like 6 or 7 phone numbers memorized, besides the house line.
  • i remember when we got the caller ID box, i thought it was like being in the CIA to know who is calling.
  • "Get off the computer, I need to use the phone!"
  • blockbuster was a big deal movie night, but we also had impulse grocery store rental nights. i used to love looking at the VHS tape boxes, the artwork etc. especially horror/sci fi. i was the youngest, so nobody gave a shit what i wanted to watch and if they did, no one ever wanted to watch what i wanted to watch, which was entirely based on box cover art.

[-] PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS@hexbear.net 20 points 11 months ago

Idk if you've seen any of Panos Cosmatos' movies (Beyond the Black Rainbow, Mandy), but he's talked about he wants to make the movies he imagined when he looked at the box art in the videos store

[-] FALGSConaut@hexbear.net 17 points 11 months ago

I remember calling my friend and being bewildered that he knew it was me before I even said anything, that was my first encounter with caller ID

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[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago

i remember when we got the caller ID box, i thought it was like being in the CIA to know who is calling.

I definitely remember this feeling.

[-] UmbraVivi@hexbear.net 35 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Walking into a hexbear meetup only to find out all these power posters are actually 20 years older than me

late 90s kids (youngest millennials/oldest zoomers) where u at

[-] PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago

I'm an old millennial so I absorbed some of Gen X's particular Hitler particles

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[-] aFairlyLargeCat@hexbear.net 32 points 11 months ago

I watched the first moon landing live in college.

[-] ProxyTheAwesome@hexbear.net 23 points 11 months ago

In your 70s? Dang elder cat here. Hexbear apparently has got people who were born in 2008 and people who born in 1950.

[-] JuneFall@hexbear.net 13 points 11 months ago

Which is a good point since the hostile part of the lemmyverse tries to tell us, who have quite a bit of diversity and lived experience that we are all 14 year olds. Some of us witnessed the births of countries which freed themselves from colonialism and USA's influences life!

It is a try to reduce us to a caricature that can be easily dismissed.

[-] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 18 points 11 months ago

jesus-christ You're my dad's age. I'm 36.

[-] PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS@hexbear.net 14 points 11 months ago

I think you win

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[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 28 points 11 months ago

I'm not quite 40, but I am definitely well over 40 in spirit lol

[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 18 points 11 months ago

Yeah I thought about it before posting and the 40 y.o. line seems a bit high, but “Over 37 Years Old Club” or whatever doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Open membership anyway.

[-] dudes_eating_beans@hexbear.net 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

not 40 yet but they taught us how to use the dewey decimal system and played oregon trail on apple IIe computers with floppy disks so waddup

[-] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 18 points 11 months ago

Anyone remember Kid Pix on the old apple whatever. Remember loving it in middle school.

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[-] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 26 points 11 months ago
[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 19 points 11 months ago

My folks have their old rotary phone in the basement. Showed it to my kids and they didn’t believe it was actually a phone.

[-] AcidSmiley@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago

I've found that at least the models from the late 70s also still work perfectly fine, they use the same plugs as modern phones in my country. Audio quality on them is excellent, too.

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[-] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 26 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

fedposting How do you do, fellow Gen-Xers and X-ennials? Which Seattle grunge band's vinyl albums are you spinning on this lovely day while decked out in your finest flannels? I am partial to Stone Temple Pilots' Core, particularly side B track 4, "crackerman"

[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 36 points 11 months ago

I love the idea of some 42 year old Fed who monitors this site and hates us all, but genuinely likes talking about 90s music and movies with us.

[-] impiri@lemm.ee 17 points 11 months ago
[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I mean, for real, let’s say you get paid a full time salary just to watch this site. It’s obvious just being here for 15 minutes, we aren’t a threat to anyone other than like, dispensing general communist ideals. And honestly I don’t think the feds really care that much about that.

You would have to realize your job is a joke and you’re getting paid to do nothing. I want think hypothetical fed would be like “ok look, I AM a fed. But let me just sit here and shitpost and grift the FBI’s money, and I won’t actually do anything”

[-] PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS@hexbear.net 15 points 11 months ago

I just want to give back to the community that has given me so muchfedposting

[-] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago

Nirvana's In Utero was just that good

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[-] impiri@lemm.ee 24 points 11 months ago

Going to the video store was a nice little weekly ritual. It's objectively more convenient to have streaming services pumping everything into our eyeballs instantly, but the extra friction of a trip out and the slight chance that something might not be available made the movies and games themselves seem more valuable. Oh god I just read back through that and spontaneously dislocated my hip

[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago

I really hope I’m not being a boomer and remembering the past with rose-colored glasses, but there really was something to that weekend ritual of picking out movies at the video store versus just picking whatever from a streaming service. Of course, having all those options available now is incredible too, so not better just different.

[-] ratboy@hexbear.net 14 points 11 months ago

I loved it so much! Hollywood Video and Blockbuster ruled. I think being able to pick up the box and look at the cover art and stuff is it's own special dopamine hit

[-] JuneFall@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago

The social aspect of suggestions and such.

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[-] Juice@hexbear.net 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yeah go ahead and add me to the list of leftists bound for the glue factory

[-] ratboy@hexbear.net 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Adding to the nostalgia pile BECAUSE memory unlocked: used to be obsessed with talking on the phone in middle school. The LANDLINE phone. 3 way calling the homies to watch old Van Damme movies and Iron Chef and prank call people. I'd be on the phone for like 4 hours at a time. 10pm was the cut off but you bet your ass I snuck the corded phone into my bedroom...then my dad would wake up to go to the bathroom and see the phone cable trailing into my bedroom. Never got grounded buy boy did I get a talkin' to.

[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 14 points 11 months ago

The funny thing is, I’m not nostalgic AT ALL for phone conversations. I think being able to text people is so awesome, I really wish I was able to do that growing up instead of awkward phone conversations.

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[-] WashedAnus@hexbear.net 22 points 11 months ago

I'm just glad there's a group of people older than me. I'll be there in a few years, but it's nice to know I'm not the oldest weirdo here.

[-] ThomasMuentzner@hexbear.net 20 points 11 months ago

i remeber the time when you would just show up at the door of your friends home unannounced and if he wasnt there you would just go to the next and when he was there you would just go with him picking up the next...

and then once one of these friends got a console , he became the homebase.

[-] Evilphd666@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago
[-] DickFuckarelli@hexbear.net 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Here are few old guy memories from the 80s:

My first computer was a Commodore 64, in 1985. I had no interest in learning computing - I just wanted to play games.

The rich kid up the street had a BMX I was in awe of. It was a Haro. I had a Huffy from a discount store.

I think back about how shockingly everything was seemingly it's own component. Like phones or hi-fi stereos or TVs and VCRs. You had a device and it did one thing.

Sears reigned supreme for weekend trips to the mall. We didn't have money so it was a lot of window shopping. Related: I remember when department stores had full out restaurants inside of them. When my mom felt like being fancy she'd eat at one.

For a while in the 80s there was a push to buy American made shit. As if consumer spending could ward off the capitalists off-shoring literally everything.

In school they taught us Russia was bad but never explained why. Like, ever. Teachers would just espouse that the communists wanted to "kill our way of life."

Schools opened at sun up and latch key kids would come and go as they please, outside of core hours. Someone would open the ball shed and everyone would just play soccer or kickball.

Parents seemed to just have kids out of obligation. Some 'rents seemed happy to be involved. But most seemed to just being going through the motions.

Being poor, the next best thing to having something was having a magazine about something. I was a fan of Thrasher and Video Games & Computer Entertainment.

[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 15 points 11 months ago

Y'all remember Yakov Smirnoff? I remember watching one of his specials as a kid and they went to his hometown or something with a camera crew and the place they showed could've been down the street from where I was living. They were treating it like a charity fundraising expedition. For just a dollar day type shit. It was very weird to me.

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[-] ChrisLicht@lemm.ee 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If you haven’t been through Checkpoint Charlie and shopped at GUM, you’re not really an oldhead.

[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

One of the little pleasures of becoming commie is recalling how the GDR was portrayed in the US as some horrific nightmare state at least as awful as the DPRK is today; only to find out that, even though they had some problems, it was actually a pretty chill place to live (if anything complaints I’ve heard from former residents of the GDR was that life was a bit too boring).

An example of what I mean btw… our church had a missionary to West Germany that visited. He told us in the East, there was a bus of schoolchildren from the West driving through. The police boarded their bus and found a Bible, so they pulled all the kids out and shot them. Literally all the grown ups in my church uncritically believed this story.

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[-] jimmyjazx@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago

Video rental stores were great. Recording songs off the radio onto cassette tapes. Trading PC games on 5 1/4 floppies. Dot matrix printers

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[-] OgdenTO@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago

I would be in but I'm worried that a reminiscing club is a bit too boomer energy.

[-] star_wraith@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago
[-] OgdenTO@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago

"I'm not a boomer" I scream repeatedly into the void while I share memes I found on Facebook with my scattered acquiantances

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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
112 points (100.0% liked)

chapotraphouse

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