People smoking everywhere
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The children of today have no idea what it was like to go into a McDonald’s and see used ashtrays on the tables. And good for them. But holy shit, how did anyone ever have an appetite?
Ugh, and the restaurants with the low half wall to separate the smoking and non smoking sections?
You are lucky if you get a half wall!
I miss that. You would go to someone's indoor wedding, and one half of the room just would not be visible.
It gave the disco lights way more flair when passing through a high smoke cloud. Yes, we have fog machines now, but they're typically more to your knees, it's a different effect.
Plus you could tell which tables were discussing the heavy politics based on the thickness of the smoke above the table. The weakass smoke-free tables was where the dull-minded sat, saying nothing of consequence.
I don't miss only having 3 channels to watch and having to be home at a particular time to watch something.
It was a shared experience, and! and! the quality was better! Don't believe me? Find any freesat channel right now and compare it to any streaming service.
Streaming services have to serve millions of different customers different content on-demand, and as a result the signal is compressed and dithered to the point of unviewabaility (says me, my family are apparently unaffected by the fuzzy black dots...) even on 4K streams.
Broadcast content? Its just chucked out there over the waves for anyone to catch, and the bitrate and quality are fantastic in comparison.
This is definitely a hot take. I’m yet to see broadcast content that comes close to streaming content in quality.
Paid streaming, sure - you get the nice bitrate.
Free streaming (or Netflix bottom tier) vs Free Broadcast? Broadcast wins hands down in quality
I've seen silky smooth 60fps 720p streams coming over the air, compared to what I was getting with Netflix through cable.
Just pirate the 4k versions if you want to be a video snob.
HD piracy on demand is not that easy. Even popcorn time at its peak would suffer buffering if the media wasn't popular enough
Pirate it ten minutes before demand.
you're asking me for a level of foresight that is simply not possible
Also the 'cultural exchange' you'd get if you lived in border regions!
the quality was better
This very much depends on when you're taking about. Over the air television when I was young was absolutely not better quality than any streaming service now. 480i delivered by an analog interference-prone signal definitely does not compare favourably to streaming.
Smoking.
Do you know why all the wall paint and curtains of the 70s and 80s never included pristine white? Yes, that’s why. I’m convinced the choices of golds, oranges, and browns were just giving in to the inescapable film of nicotine tinge on everything, everywhere.
To this day, when I see “cream”, “ecru”, “chiffon” or any other creative name for not-quite-white, I think of nicotine stains.
Restaurant smoking was the worst.
I’ve never, and this is likely why. Growing up in that acrid awfulness was a great deterrent.
VHS tapes, and having to rewind them.
Although the ability to record almost anything on a cheap VHS tape was nice, now everything has copy protection.
VHS could copy the subtitles and teletex info too, even if it wasn't displayed, which is nuts
Please be kind, rewind.
Leaded gas
As trivial as it sounds, pornography.
Imagine having to pull out the trench from the winter drawer and drive to another town's smutt shop, so they don't recognize you, every time you feel like wanking
For a long time, I thought porno mags in bushes at parks was a ruse invented by the previous generation to confound the current
I actually miss that all the things take a wile to start or function. Im not happy with this fast life were all its instantly. That only give me anxiety.
Vaporwave... It was cool for like 2 minutes in 2015 but it got old very quick. Just get any 80s song and slow it down on some free audio software. In a lot of ways it could be seen as a precursor to other trash like nightcore or breakcore.
Nightcore way predates 2015
I remember those old Alvin and the chipmunks versions of songs you used to get on YouTube. They were similar
Nightcore existed since like early 2000s. Huge scene when youtube just became a thing. Vaporwave came at the very least in 2010s, when lofi experienced a burst of popularity
I wish it stayed cool longer only because I didn’t care for it at first but then really got into it around 2020, but by then the genre was already dead.
Changing CDs just to listen to a few songs from a different album. Also carrying around CDs.
I’m conflicted. I enjoy being able to listen to anything anywhere but it makes me not listen to full albums anymore, possibly missing out on good music.
Same, I tend to reserve full album listens for working and long car/plane/train rides. With the current standard of streaming services over mobile, I find myself mostly listening to previously downloaded stuff because of inconsistent US mobile data service in my area occasionally. I've also gone the route of upgrading my old iPod with more storage (160GB -> 1TB) and battery life and just carry all of my music with me.
You can set most music apps to go by album
Thank you Mr obvious. The point is that streaming platforms are changing the mentality and behavior to listen to random titles of different artists instead of full albums and that is also why albums don’t have a „story“ anymore. It’s too easy to click away to something different, skip a title (was already easy with CDs), be distracted. I personally own a vinyl player to combat this for myself.
You have free will and can make your own choices about how to consume music. And drag wants you to use that free will to not misgender drag as "mister".
My childhood. I don't understand people who do. Mine was mostly loneliness, confusion, trauma, emotional neglect, guilt, shame, some abandonment, some physical abuse, etc. Every day has been a step towards better than the previous. I don't want to or miss anything going backwards.
Anonimity, privacy, and the dream that the world was full of intelligent kind people.
Having to do yard work or setting up holiday decorations outside. Ever since moving from a house to an apartment, I've had zero yard work outside of picking up dog shit when walking my brother's dogs and the closest I've come to holiday decorating is setting up a fake indoor Christmas tree and decorating it.
Used to have to do a lot of leaf picking up and weed pulling growing up. Never liked it and still don't because of how long it'd take and how I don't like getting dirt dirty. Also, I was never a massive fan of decorating outside, specifically just Halloween and Christmas, because my family used to have a ton of decorations and my mom always wanted them a certain way, even if that meant taking a few down and moving them. Lots of work over a weekend. Looked good afterwards, but I can't say I've missed putting stuff up. I'll leave that to other people like the people near me who for some reason still have Halloween decorations up.
Cars that would vapor lock when driving in the mountains.
As flatlander: I need some clarification. Why was this, why is it no longer something?
I’ve never heard of this but I didn’t grow up near mountains. I did however grow up in the Midwest and couldn’t stand anti-lock brakes — one time I hit a car because instead of allowing me to control the sliding the car refused and just went straight into the car ahead of me.
These days I live nowhere near snow (unless I choose to drive into the mountains) so I’m not sure what the situation is with modern cars. I did go up into the mountains last years when the temperature dropped to 39°F overnight and my car freaked about tire pressure — that wasn’t a fun lesson to learn.
Gay jokes on TV. You know the kind. "it's funny because it's gay", very prevalent on series like Friends. Friends is a great show even today, but I do not miss the gay jokes.
I watched ace Ventura the other day and I cringed so hard at the transphobia and I remember laughing at it in the theaters too when it was new.
My internalised homophobia definitely thought homophobia was comedy gold back in the day...
Lemmy.ml leading up to the election.
Reagan being president. No, not even now.
collecting wood for heating.
Polio
Not that gasoline cars are gone (unfortunately) but I personally won’t ever go back to it. Electric cars are just so much better in any way except range and charge time. But those are honestly overblown topics that you won’t think much about in your daily life once you got used to it.
Big family gatherings. I did not particularly enjoyed them growing up (I come from big extended families) but when I became a parent they were unbereable so I just stopped attending. I couldn't fathom to subject my child to all that nonsense. Best decision ever! While cousins fight over who brings what side dish for Christmas I will be relaxing in a hammock by the beach, thank you very much.