From the Atlantic article they link:
I cannot overemphasize how little there was to do before we all had smartphones. A barren expanse of empty time would stretch out before you: waiting for the bus, or for someone to come home, or for the next scheduled event to start. Someone might be late or take longer than expected, but no notice of such delay would arrive, so you’d stare out the window, hoping to see some sign of activity down the block. You’d pace, or sulk, or stew.
Dude, read a book. What the fuck?
I don’t have a smartphone and am happy to answer any other questions.
seriously, I would bring a book wherever I went. these people are intellectual voids
Earlier in the Axios thing they talk about people watching Friends and Seinfeld to understand the before times. But they’re forgetting Elaine aghast at Puddy for not reading on a plane. “You’re just gonna sit there, staring at the back of the seat?” “Yeah.”
Boomers, Gen Xers and elder millennials are now the last people who remember what it was like to use a pay phone, a paper map, a typewriter, etc. — and they’re being rapidly outnumbered by younger adults who don’t.
younger millennials and even elder zoomers remember those things, at least the pay phones if nothing else
I’m a YM and I’ve used all of those things
Typewriters? I’m an elder zoomer and we had computer class and big personal computers to type on when I was a young kid.
I’m an older millennial and I’ve be never used a typewriter. Think I’ve only seen them in museums
Do you have some kind of portable device that allows others to instantaneously reach you?
I don’t like how the author said this, I but kinda agree with what they are getting at. Any time I’m in a line or waiting for something, I just pull out my phone and amuse myself. Before smart phones, in those situations I was usually just alone with my thoughts. I’m now at the point that being alone with my thoughts can make me a bit fidgety and uncomfortable.
As if the same people who get angry at you for looking at your phone wouldn’t also beat the shit out of you if you pulled out a book. As if you could just pull out a book in line. Do you carry a backpack literally everywhere? Most people don’t, hence what the author said.
Also, reading a book takes quite a bit more commitment, and you’re a little less connected to the environment when you do it.
There are a lot of books that are pocket-sized, and many people carry purses. I don’t have a book every time I’m in line at the grocery store, but for the examples the author uses - “waiting for the bus, or for someone to come home, or for the next scheduled event to start” - yes, of course I’ll have a book with me.
No one’s beaten the shit out of me for it yet. (Some folk did look askance at me at a wedding once.) But we’re not even talking about “people who get angry at you for looking at your phone,” we’re talking about people who pretend they have no idea how humans ever functioned without phones.
Most people just watched A LOT more television.
I think they still watch a similar amount. They just also have their phones out now
Yeah I guess that’s another big difference: people used to mostly only be able to consume one dumb thing at a time.
I think the difference is maybe more pronounced with young people. I remember being like 12 and just… sitting there and watching whole episodes of TV shows, back to back, with commercials and everything. I can’t imagine most adults today doing that, let alone kids. You were just sort of captive to whatever happened to be available right then and there. It was usually something you’d seen before, but what else are you going to do? You could read books, but you were also limited to whatever you physically had picked up from the bookstore or library.
I would read the same magazines 2-4 times thru. And I’d read mom’s magazines too. Did I care about a better home or garden? No, but it was better than nothing when my mom had control of the remote and settled on some old musical in black and white
The typical Fox News addict of today also probably wouldn’t have been caught dead watching anything news related outside of local evening and maybe 20/20 depending on the subject matter. The CNN nerds were still watching though.
There was also a better spread of educational programming in popular circulation (talking NASA-owned TLC days and prior here).
there’s a pop-sociology book written in the 80s, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, that convincingly argues against the dominance of mass media. It has some major flaws, which I will allow you to discover for yourself, but its conclusions are very compelling and I think it provides some useful tools for evaluating the deluge of “informative” content.
I remember reading it when I was in high school (early 2000s) and not liking it, but I was dumb and I’d consider reading it again.
So some boomer argued things weren’t boring enough? Have they ever had a job?
If people actually had the standards for being entertained they should we would have global communism already. Spending 8+ hours straight where you aren’t allowed to do anything you want to and are expected to subvert all of your brain’s resources to your cash overlord is the most boring experience known to man.
“Ohhhh I’m bored now at work, the world is ending, the woke agenda has transferred the boredom mind virus” welcome to being under stimulated fucker, wonder how people with ADHD feel when you tell them they’re penalized for fidgeting or looking at their phone?
Certainly there’s a factor of problematicness with how social media is constantly designed to be as addictive as possible, but for some reason these fuckers always focus on how kids these days are listening to music (a REAL, ACTUAL communist writer unironically claimed this was caused by hedonic treadmilling and not enough organizing, and not just having fucking ADHD) or reading Wikipedia instead of working or while being at class. Maybe blame the boring ass work conditions instead of the technology that’s finally made you realize you deserve more from your time?
“Why don’t I enjoy looking at a spreadsheet for 70% of my life? My phone has infected me!”
Is that the one that got posted all over the “normie” internet back in 2011-2012? That makes a half-brained argument against TV and saying that 1984 was too obvious and that people would rebel, and that the real dystopia was Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451? Because I remember reading that title on 9gag back then and wondering if my english skills were failing me, since I could not make sense of that at all.
Cell phones didn’t become commonplace until I was in my teens. Before that, we were free! If someone didn’t show up when they were supposed to and they didn’t answer their home phone we just assumed they were dead and then moved on with our lives. If your car broke down, you sat on the side of the road with your sunshade inside-out and it had a message that asked people to call for help. Presidential Shootings were much more common place. Shoplifting was way easier because there were so few cameras. MTV played music videos!
Shoplifting is actually easier now cause most stores don’t want the liability that comes with physically apprehending shoplifters. Most of them still have “Loss Prevention” but they don’t have cuffs anymore and aren’t supposed to touch you. And local PD usually doesn’t care enough to investigate someone who they don’t have in custody when they call.
Lol, I think it may depend on where you live. Most loss prevention departments that i’m aware of spend their time building a case so that the cops can pick you up when you’re ready to leave the store. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to not get shot by some chud that thinks they’re sheriff of their store.
Before smart phones I carried a book everywhere I went and would pull it out at any point I’d generally reach for my phone now. I also got lost driving a lot.
I’d always have a portable CD player or radio and would get to be the navigator during family roadtrips and read from the map book
Hearing people as old as my boomer parents be confused by the amount of physical maps in my car currently is always jarring.
I’ve got a big ol atlas because I read somewhere that over-relying on google maps messes up your ability to function without it. It was super inconvenient at first but now I know offhand the direction and distance to just about every city in my county - and this after an entire lifetime of thinking that I had a terrible sense of direction, the truth was I had just never developed it.
I’ve met many zoomers who just stopped using a smartphone for several months or years. Myself being one. It’s not that hard. Boomers need to put their ipad down for once.
If you’re not addicted to ordering food delivery and social media there’s really no need for one outside of maybe job requirements.
the ability to search for any information humanity has acquired at a moment’s notice
I had an e-ink tablet I put all of Wikipedia and wiktionary in 3 languages on. It was like ~64G. No internet or smartphone needed. I distinctly remember carrying around pocket dictionaries as a kid too.
