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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 29th, 2023

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  • Sure, plenty of small phones with good battery life back then. Owned a new phone every three months or so, innovation went that fast in the 90’s.

    But those small phones have a few drawbacks. Too small for my hands and you can’t really shoulder it like we used to with landlines.

    I also mis proper flip phones like the Motorola Startac. You could snap those closed with authority. Can’t quite do that with those modern folding screen flips.











  • In short, the complexity acted as a filter. It was a barrier to entry, which meant you had to be a bit of a nerd to get online. Back in the ‘90’s, people made fun of you for being an online nerd. But it also meant that the people who got online tended to be smarter. More educated.

    The internet of the ‘90’s had a very nerdy culture. The worst debates were about Star Wars vs Star Trek. We disagreed on some things, but on the whole it was ‘us nerds’ online.

    Now that we made it this easy, there’s no longer a filter: you can find anyone and everyone online. Including some folks who can’t really handle this much freedom without being assholes with it. The web also gravitated towards bigger platforms which, ironically, have much less of a community feel than the old web. In the 90’s, I knew everyone on a forum by name. But on a subreddit with a million people, there’s no real ‘community’.

    The web these days is also overrun with politics, which simply wasn’t a thing back in say, 1995.


  • I’m an 80’s kid. We had to learn everything: MS-DOS, Windows, how to install OS’s and software, serial ports, etc. Nothing was easy or convenient. You had to LEARN how and why things worked if you wanted to run games and things.

    My dad never used any of our actual PC’s. He wouldn’t know which way to hold the mouse, much less anything else. We tried to teach him, but he just couldn’t grasp any of the fundamentals.

    But with an iPad? That’s easy. It just works. He can e-mail, do Facebook, watch YouTube or other streaming…

    Point is: we made shit way too accessible and convenient. Kids never have to learn anything anymore. So they don’t. We literally had to teach interns the basics of working with a desktop; all they’ve ever used was an iPad and phone.

    It also lead to the destruction of the old web. Back in the early to late ‘90’s, you had to be a nerd to use it. To WANT to use it even. But now that it’s so easy and convenient even my completely tech illiterate dad can get online, things have turned to shit. We never should’ve made it this convenient.







  • I’m always amazed cat owners let them roam. You’re putting a LOT of trust in both the animal as well as your greater environment. Just the other week I read a message from our local animal shelter. They had found a cat which had gotten poisoned. Either intentionally or unintentionally, that couldn’t be determined.

    They had to put it down before the owner was found, it was that sick. I’d feel pretty guilty if that was my cat.

    Cats can get run over, abducted, get hurt, etc. Even ignoring the fact that it’s a living creature, it’s also an expensive piece of property and vet bills aren’t cheap either.


  • FinishingDutch@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldDoing my part
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    3 months ago

    Yep. It was pretty wild that some people actually fell for the Palestine argument. That was only really an issue for a very small minority of the left. Most average Americans couldn’t find it on a map, much less a reason to give a shit about it.

    Ultimately, it wasn’t even necessary to try and fracture the left with the Palestine argument. It was already fractured enough that she never stood a chance.

    Even in a fairly normal race, it’s silly to think voters would care more about people half a world away, rather than the issues they’re dealing with themselves like the high cost of living, housing shortages, etc.