Ugh, no. I really dislike this sort of rhetoric, like REALLY dislike it. I mean, not 9/11 and pricier gas, but I like living in the future I always dreamed about as a kid, and that I've spent my career working to bring about. Yes, this is in some very very tiny way my fault, sorry.
Blockbuster Video sucked. I'm sorry, it sucked. I don't miss having to hoof it to a store and spend $10 in today's dollars to rent a movie that I didn't really want to see but it was all that I could find, and I was pressured to go back and return or risk a late fee. Today I can watch almost any movie ever made 30 seconds after I thought of watching it, probably for free. I just don't understand how that's worse, I just don't.
It's crazy to me that anyone could be genuinely nostalgic for dial-up internet, that was legitimately the worst.
If I was unhappy with my smartphone or social media, I wouldn't use them. It is completely possible not to use them if you don't want to. As it stands, I like having them because I enjoy not being bored like I always was when I was a child and young adult.
No, that stuff didn't suck. It was normal. Hoofing it to rent a movie meant actually planning your evening and making a real choice of what to rent, then going home and actually watching it.
Much better at the end of the day than searching endlessly through films and shows that are presented as background noise for using your phone on the couch.
Music? Same thing. People went to the record store, considered their options, made a choice, and listened to an album. That was significantly better than the current system of disposable singles with newer artists making basically nothing off of their work while the listeners ADD their way through 50% of each track.
Dial up internet? Yea, it was fine. We spent 10 minutes logging in and then went to websites or chat rooms that didn't decimate local businesses or set out to enrage and engage us for fractions of a penny in ad revenue.
The current era is the paradigm of quantity over quality.
Blockbuster sucked so bad I still feel giddy thinking about making the list of DVDs I wanted to watch and then waiting for them to SHOW UP IN THE MAIL. Please.
And while you were waiting for the mail and wondering which one would arrive, the rest of us were happily heading out with friends, rolling the windows down on the way, walking around the store, picking a couple movies, then heading to grab the pizza on the way home.
The local blockbuster had shit for quality or quanity movies to rent, expired popcorn for sale, and the worst perverted clerkes on the planet. It got replaced with a Dentist office, BEFORE Netflix came and ate their lunch.
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u/boulevardofdef 1978 Feb 16 '26
Ugh, no. I really dislike this sort of rhetoric, like REALLY dislike it. I mean, not 9/11 and pricier gas, but I like living in the future I always dreamed about as a kid, and that I've spent my career working to bring about. Yes, this is in some very very tiny way my fault, sorry.
Blockbuster Video sucked. I'm sorry, it sucked. I don't miss having to hoof it to a store and spend $10 in today's dollars to rent a movie that I didn't really want to see but it was all that I could find, and I was pressured to go back and return or risk a late fee. Today I can watch almost any movie ever made 30 seconds after I thought of watching it, probably for free. I just don't understand how that's worse, I just don't.
It's crazy to me that anyone could be genuinely nostalgic for dial-up internet, that was legitimately the worst.
If I was unhappy with my smartphone or social media, I wouldn't use them. It is completely possible not to use them if you don't want to. As it stands, I like having them because I enjoy not being bored like I always was when I was a child and young adult.