back in the 80s

im watching only fools and horses and i think to myself what an awesome time it was. imagine having no internet, no mobile phones and no cable tv. people were really living it. now its a big deal to get 100 likes on instagram picture, back then it was a thing to approach a girl in a club.

for the last few months i got myself old nokia 3310 but im still so far away from having a real 80s experience. i cant ever get it. it was really good time to socialize and hang out with people without notifications distracting every interaction. there must be a real positive reason i was born in such a new, high tech and pornified age though.

this post is a waste, im just rumbling to myself really. its not against the rules so i guess im good.

Nah, it is a good thought.  Well, let me rephrase... it is a thought I often have, and by that measure I am judging it as a good thought! 

I feel the same watching old movies.  Someone goes out for the day, and they are genuinely on their own, with only payphones as a connection back.  A phone rings at home, and they have to answer it to know who it is.  They have to talk to people to get information.  At age 36, I am one of the youngest to clearly remember a pre-internet age, and I do lament it.  Yeah, it enriches our lives, (this message board for example) but the sheer independence we get by not having that constant lifeline seems to be gone.  Every so often I'll decide to strike up conversations with strangers to break out of my bubble, but I'll find that everyone else is just as disabled by the internet as I am, and I get the strangest reactions to such a thing.

I've often thought how to recapture it.  Downgrading to a "dumb phone" is one way.  Another way is to be deliberate about what we learn about.  Don't take it for granted that we can look up quick answers about something... instead, put in the effort to really LEARN about something.  Really learning about geology is substantially different than just googling basic questions about rocks when we have them.  It involves reading, thinking, piecing stuff together.  Make a real effort to understand things, not just being able to grab quick information when we need it.  I've been thinking about how I can have internet fasts and abstain for long periods, but I'm yet to stumble on a sensible formula that doesn't pull me completely away from the useful, benign things.  I stay off of social media (except YouTube, which is a grey area) which I think helps immensely.  Social media stirs so much hatred, paranoia and discontent, if I could destroy it all with one press of a button, I would in a heartbeat without ever looking back.

Even the things that we thought were rotting our brains in the 80s were really not that bad.  Arcades meant getting out of the house and possibly being somewhat social.  Home video games were way shorter, and for kids dovetailed to their play outside of electronics.  The TV, most people with just rabbit ears or rooftop antennas, seems laughably benign compared to the internet, or even TV as it is in 2019 with its massive size and resolution, and "binging" capabilities.  VHS rental feels like a candy store in our memories, a candy we indulged in with great enthusiasm, but with far less frequency than we do now, even though we get far less pleasure from it now with Netflix, and the like.  Grocery store tabloids were nothing in comparison to the conspiracy theories and garbage that circulates all over the place these days.

It might be a bit of a tangent from talking about porn addiction, but not much of one.  Even if this thread goes ten pages and never mentions porn, it will almost definitely help people understand their own reboots by discussing how the internet has changed people's lives over the past 40 years, so I say it is a good thread!

I think this is a great thread. We still use a VHS player!!! My kids watch all kinds of classics. Yes the 80's were pretty fantastic, being 36 myself, but there are a lot of great ways to get away from technology in today as well. We hike a bit, go on cycling day trips. We cook together and visit farmers markets. When we are sitting down to eat at a restaurant or at home we don't have our phones in that room and don't bring them out at the table. That is time to talk, laugh, and connect. Our kids are only allowed 4 hrs per week of screen access. We just increased it because of an online science class they are taking. That is enough time to take their class, watch 1 movie per week, and 1 extra hr for research on a topic of interest. That really is all they need it for anyway, right? Maybe we are just too weird and strict but I try to let them have a childhood full of life not screens. They are outside all the time, they build, play, and adventure. Those are all of my favorite parts of the 80's and I am glad to see my kids get that experience. It takes more self-control but yes it is still possible.

i remember VHS rentals! holy god, i used to rent the same movie for a whole week and watch it every day! back to now, i cant watch a youtube video without fast forwarding. that is quite a difference even if we are talking about just 20 years span.

Great Thread.

Being born in 1987 for me it was the 90s which were golden. I used to play football everyday on the street when I was a kid. Everyday I took my football, strolled the neighbourhood, rang at the doorbell of my friends, trying to gather as many players as possible. And even if no one would come, I played for myself for hours kicking the ball against the wall. At the age of 12, I decided to train my weak foot on a constant basis and I can proudly say that I became two-footed in the following months.

The magic word is boredom. Boredom is usually negatively connoted. But for me personally, boredom was often the starting point for many great things. I'm a very creative person but if I hadn't been bored, I would have never turned out to be creative, I guess. In my mind, you can learn to be creative. Of course, you gotta have talent, but you have to learn how to put your creative mind to action. If your first instinct is to kill boredom as fast as possible, what do you do nowadays? You watch porn, you play videogames, you watch youtube while having netflix on your tv and whatsapp videochat on your smartphone. MADNESS!

Instant gratification is king but at what cost? It's a funny world, we live in.

@Aquarius: I think, it's great that you have such rules. My parents were very strict also. I owned a Sega MegaDrive but I was only allowed to play one hour per day and only after finishing my homework. Kids need to be accustomed with new technologies but indulging in them can be fatal, in my mind. I was volunteering in a primary school last year and there was one kid who had to draw a picture of his room. He completely filled out the picture in black. I was curious so I asked him why he had drawn his room all black. Do you know what he answered? Take a wild guess... He said, I quote: "This is the big TV in my room. It's turned off!" WTF??? Needless to say that he was displaying behavioral problems and his cognitive skills were not age-appropriate. Talk about a fourth grader who cannot cut paper accident-free...

I am 51, was born in August of 1967. I was born Amish, my parents left Amish and went to a Beachy Amish church when I was 2. Raised in Middlebury IN. We grew up with no television or radio. We had a large garden and a 2 acre strawberry patch, we sold strawberries that us kids picked. There were 8 of us children. My father was mentally abusive, would tell us all the time that we were useless pieces of crap. The English kids in school made fun of me because I wasn't English and the Amish kids because I wasn't Amish. At the time I thought I had a terrible childhood. I look back on those days with nostalgia now, I see how good I had it. I can still see the piles of beautiful ripe strawberries, taste them, the freshly hoed rows of vegetables, dirt under my bare feet, butchering days, boiling the fat off a hog, fresh fried pigs brains, freshly boiled cow tongue, a fresh sun ripened peach right off the tree, bushels of fresh sweet cherries, the little country church we went to. It is sad to think that was hell for me at the time working from sunup to sun down and how far I missed it. I always tend to look to the future instead of enjoying today. Today I want to enjoy today.

So while I was reading this thread my husband came in and I shared it with him. He used to come on here as Metal22. Anyway his response I thought was good so I wanted to share it. He said one of the things he did (and I remember him talking about this during his recovery from time to time) and still tries to do is to get back to the feeling of life before technology. He tries to set a goal once a week of doing something he really enjoys that is fulfilling and gratifying that doesn't include a screen at all. We are makers and we own a business welding things for our work. He tries to make one thing that is just for him. He says it really helps him get back to who he is. He said in the early part of his reboot when he was really tempted he started doing this to get his mind to focus on something other than porn. Instead of wasting hrs in front of a screen we now have a beautiful coffee table and some really cool art! It is a story written in craft about his recovery. He gets to appreciate the labor of his recovery. I think it makes me love those things so much more. I mention this as encouragement to others. If you are struggling and feeling tempted maybe now is the time to learn a new skill. It could be a simple as learning a new instrument, drawing, running, anything. If it is helpful great!