this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 108 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Best old school perk is doing all your stupid kid shit at a time where cameras weren't ubiquitous.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 days ago

Or at least not permanent.

I grew up in the early 2000s and while starting somewhere around 2005 cameras and the first social sites became a thing, nothing of that exists today. Myspace and SchülerVZ (German Facebook clone) were super popular, but don't exist anymore. Camera phones didn't have an easy way to export photos and most hard drives from back then just died at some point. There's hardly anything left. And that's a good thing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

I do feel bad about the younger generations of today. It seems like every part of their life is recorded or streamed now. I'm not sure how comfortable I would have been with that, when I was their age.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No... But I've been a 13 year old boy in the 1990's and had the same experience.

[–] bruhduh 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Same but 80s and only discovered cannabis and motorbikes

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

When you're sold a version of nostalgia for something you never experienced.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 63 points 4 days ago (2 children)

This is one thing I will always appreciate of growing up Gen-X. Our moms would kick us out of the house after breakfast and expected us to be gone until the street lights started to buzz. A pack of us on BMX bikes, adventuring, exploring abandoned buildings, jumping off cliffs and into rivers or the ocean, etc. It genuinely ruled ams and I fully appreciate that it did.

[–] disguy_ovahea 27 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I’m on the cusp (xennial) and it’s kinda crazy in hindsight. I had the exact same experience you described, but when it got dark, I’d go home and play with the Commodore 64 or Atari.

[–] Vorticity 16 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Same for me, but I guess I'm a little younger since my console was NES and, later, a Gateway 2000 computer.

I'm so glad that I had those experiences and so sad that my son won't. I hope that I can give him enough of a similar experience that he can at least identify with Calvin and Hobbes.

[–] MutilationWave 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Us xennials are a special mini generation. Analog childhood, digital adulthood. The average xennial is quite proficient with computers and other tech, compared to those who were born before AND after. You see we had the childhood curiosity when the internet was starting to catch on. We learned how to navigate in DOS or early Windows. We had to figure shit out because these things were not easy to use.

I thought, when I was a teen, I can't imagine how good with this stuff the kids being born today will be. But I was very wrong.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

This is so accurate!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Atari! Yars' Revenge, Asteroids, Frogger and Space Invaders were my jam.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

I was born in the mid-90's and I was also more or less raised that way (until a certain age). I remember being able to get home in time for dinner after a whole day of playing outside just because it "felt" like it was almost dinner time. We would go to the nearby "forest" where we built huts, climbed into trees, made wooden swords out of sticks, and sometimes had "battles" with rivaling groups about certain areas in the forest. We'd be there for hours even in the pouring rain. There was a whole economy around these wooden swords and other services like building a hut. It was better than any video game ever could be

[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

The bikes are non negotiable. Also there's some sort of bully involved.

[–] slazer2au 15 points 4 days ago

And a golden retriever

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Bully becomes a friend at the end though

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (8 children)

That's absolute bullshit. I've never met anyone who turned their bully into a friend while they were still in school together.

[–] Anticorp 17 points 4 days ago

I did. Okay, not so much a friend, as a guy who would talk to me regularly and treat me and my friends with respect, occasionally tagging along with us. He's still in my Facebook friends list to this day.

Back in elementary school there was a kid who was easily twice as big as everyone else. He'd push his way around and demand he get whatever he wanted. He finally crossed me one day, and I punched him as hard as I could right in the stomach. When he stood back up, I did it again. He never crossed me or my friends again, and became generally friendly with us. Bullies don't concede without force.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

It's more realistic to realize a friend is actually a bully.

[–] SpaceNoodle 10 points 4 days ago

I had a bully chill the fuck out once we made it to high school, but it turns out that was because of all the drugs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

You’ve obviously not lived inside an American high school movie

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[–] ThatWeirdGuy1001 26 points 4 days ago (2 children)
[–] Agent641 6 points 3 days ago

Or kissing Wendy Peffercorn

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Nostalgia is bittersweet & I love it as much as anyone but the bigger picture is this: capitalism grows like a weed or a vampire & every generation had freedom without cameras like that until gen-Xers, who were the last, which is why it feels like such magic now even tho then it was just life & being outside

[–] theangryseal 19 points 4 days ago (7 children)

I’m a millennial. I remember a time without cameras everywhere. I also grew up in the poorest part of WV and I’ve seen my own childhood home in like 10 documentaries on poverty so…

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[–] MutilationWave 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I agree for the most part, but as an early millennial, we had that freedom too. Society didn't truly go crazy until some time after 2000 in my opinion. I turned 16 that year.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Early to mid mollenial here with the same experience. It all went downhill when Facebook and flip phones with cameras came out ie. around 2006.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I have repeatedly felt like taking some emery cloth to my neighbors ring door bell camera, which records me when ever I am in my front yard. There is an expense to replacing cameras and they seem like easy targets, if you go about it right.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

It was fun and I feel sorry for anyone who didn't get to have that kind of childhood. But we almost died so many times. I still have flashbacks to times I was trapping in mud or climbing a huge cliff. I was so lucky I made it past 20

[–] LovableSidekick 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You'll never be a middle-aged accountant in the 80s either, just fyi.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

My grandfather was, but it does seem rather unlikely he'll be able to do it again now that you mention it.

[–] Dasus 3 points 3 days ago

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like banana.

[–] friend_of_satan 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Or on skateboards, running from rent-a-cops.

[–] MutilationWave 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Hell yeah. Running from real cops too. This leads directly to the beginning of me becoming radicalized.

A cop came up while we were skating on an unused building's loading dock. He had his hands kinda up like hey I just want to talk to you guys.

He did. He threatened us. He said he was the boss and if we crossed him he'd take our boards, beat us up, and take us to jail. He brought out a paper pad and a pen, and I quote to the best of my memory- "This is my magic pen. Why is it magic? Because whatever I write with it is what happened."

[–] friend_of_satan 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

One of my most memorable experiences skating on "no skateboarding allowed" property in Jr. High, where a RAC came up and one of my friends said "Um, excuse me, suck my dick sir." I thought "omg we are fucked" and just ran.

Another time in HS I wasn't even skating, I just had my skateboard with me, and had climbed up onto a wall outside a mall loading dock. I saw the RAC's coming and got worried they'd be dicks like always and ran into a Walgreens in the mall. I thought they weren't following me and I'd kill time, so I stopped to do my blood pressure check at the machine, then went to piss. On my way out an undercover RAC slammed me up against the wall and said into his radio "we got him!" Another RAC came and started patting me down, and when he got to the back of my Alternative Tentacles record company shirt, right where the words "Stop Skate Harassment" were printed, I looked back at him, and he said "yeah I see your shirt." They then said I was a cocaine dealer who had just gone and flushed my stash down the toilet. I was like 16, had never done drugs, and was like "whaaaat? Are you crazy?" They let me go but told me not to come back for 3 months. I worked in that mall though so I ignored them.

[–] MutilationWave 5 points 4 days ago

Good for you. I forgot about Alternative Tentacles!

[–] captainlezbian 5 points 4 days ago

Maybe I'm just well adjusted but at 30 years old I can't imagine deciding to lord my power over teenagers

[–] NounsAndWords 8 points 4 days ago

True I was sitting inside by myself without friends before it was cool.

[–] shalafi 9 points 4 days ago

Fine. I won't be that boy again.

[–] BuckWylde 8 points 4 days ago

That's all I did during summer breaks as a kid. My friends and I practically lived on our bikes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Just play Kids On Bikes, bout the closest you'll get.

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