What's something you miss/ are glad about nowadays?

  On 1/26/2021 at 8:46 PM, joshuatxuk said:

The 90s really ended on 9/11. I still find it strange people have grown up in the era after. 

https://www.wallstreetmagnate.com/index.cfm?do=article.beautifulandhauntingfoundpicturesfrominsidetheworldtradecenterrestaurant
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/15/take-picture

I'll be honest, I don't think I'll ever visit NYC because my familiarity with it is so heavily indebted to film and tv portrayals of it from decades ago.

For better and worst it's looking the real estate of it is looking like every other slick re-developed city in the world.

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It's weird to think that I was actually inside the WTC at one point when I was a kid, back in Sept 1995 I think. I don't remember much aside from the fact that my fam and I were waiting in line for a good hour in the lobby to board the elevator, which then took us up to the 100th something floor. I just remember the building swaying slightly from that height looking down at the city scape and I think there was some popcorn vendor on that floor too.

Last time I was in NYC was March 2003. It was kind of surreal gazing down at that same foundation years later only to find construction crews moving about. But one thing I do kind of miss was taking shots with those cheap yellow Polaroid cameras and then taking them to Wal-Mart or some other retail chain to have the film processed into physical photographs. This was just four years before the first iPhone model hit the market I think.

(Reminiscence by an aging millennial innit)

Also borgr for pege brek 

i miss the days when it wasn't so pathetic to post on an idm forum lol

I miss the days when bands/artists used to release an album every year or 2. now it's just like eh fuck it, we'll release something now, then wait 8 years till the next one. 

Well I'm only 18 but i enjoyed growing up without a phone 24/7

Even though in in my phone a lot these days in glad is didn't grow up to he one of those mfs who had a phone at the age of 5, it kind of ruins the youth in a way

  On 1/26/2021 at 11:14 PM, zero said:

I miss the days when bands/artists used to release an album every year or 2. now it's just like eh fuck it, we'll release something now, then wait 8 years till the next one. 

Speaking of which, what's the status on artists like Team Doyobi? VHS Head?

Then again Seefeel saw like a 15-year hiatus between their last two albums I think

I'm gen X (1974), though I prefer Coupland's Microserfs over Generation X. I've read Microserfs about once a year since it was published.

When I was a teenager, stupid things, even bloody awful mistakes and social faux pas were relatively quickly forgotten - now almost everything is public whether you want it or not, everything will be remembered and accessible forever by the internet, ruining your life in various ways even after you're gone.

I was bullied hard for being a weirdo (there wasn't proper diagnostic criteria for Asperger's yet) but there was no permanent psychological or physical damage (I was brought up to be a resilient weirdo) - now cyberbullying, technologically amplified and public, drives children to suicide.

I wouldn't want to be any younger than I am - at the same time I'm already worried about how I'm going to teach my son to navigate life as he gets older, as everything seems to get progressively more FUBARed.

I sort of miss the days in my youth when I would just listen to vinyls and CDs, read books and comics, watch movies through the nights, muck about with my Amiga, play RPGs and board games with other weirdos, etc. - I can still do the same things, but the arbitrariness of the kind of freedom is gone - things have to be scheduled and timeboxed.

I definitely miss the feeling of subjective time stretching to ridiculous lengths - weekend and summer days that seemed to last forever - now days just slip by silently like a fleet of Teslas on a freeway.

Even the whole pandemic thing, almost a year - barely a blip on the radar. I prefer solitude anyway.

I'm glad I'm still a weirdo, but a relatively stable and content one (although it requires some daily psychopharmacology).

  On 1/26/2021 at 11:19 PM, ambermonke said:

Speaking of which, what's the status on artists like Team Doyobi? VHS Head?

Then again Seefeel saw like a 15-year hiatus between their last two albums I think

I think there was some VHS Head gossip in the past few months. don't think a release date was announced yet.

but yeah, I over simplified for effect, and the 8 year reference was of course a nod to everyone's favorite Scottish boy band... ffs brothers, it's beyond parody at this point. give us a sign, anything.

I miss when Geogaddi was the new album

  On 1/26/2021 at 11:19 PM, ambermonke said:

Speaking of which, what's the status on artists like Team Doyobi?

Gladwin seems to be mostly busy with the Wyrding Module solo project. Peverett works at BIMM Institute to my knowledge but I might be wrong.

  On 1/26/2021 at 10:39 PM, joshuatxuk said:

I'm struck by how this could apply to so many different places on Earth in the same timeframe of history. 

In your part of the world too, then... I must admit I find it interesting, since what (little) I know about USA is that people there are used to moving around from place to place way more (for jobs), not to mention coming over the Pond from the Old Country in the first place. But I guess even despite of that, people tend to naturally form a sort of local society everywhere they go, and that this sudden (only two generations?) shift to individualism must be viewed as something rather unnatural and disruptive.

  On 1/27/2021 at 12:30 AM, cichlisuite said:

In your part of the world too, then... I must admit I find it interesting, since what (little) I know about USA is that people there are used to moving around from place to place way more (for jobs), not to mention coming over the Pond from the Old Country in the first place. But I guess even despite of that, people tend to naturally form a sort of local society everywhere they go, and that this sudden (only two generations?) shift to individualism must be viewed as something rather unnatural and disruptive.

Well America has a lot of dynamics as a colonizer country so it's more akin to bigger Latin American countries and Australia and New Zealand to some extent. But it's also sprawling and there's a myriad of communities that were quite homogenous and fairly static or isolated. Nothing compared to often centuries or even millennia of constant villages / communities as the UK or Europe but there were some that def had little change for generations. Those smaller towns and especially more rural, remote, and often natural industry oriented towns (i.e. farming, fishing, lumber, etc.) come to mind. I read a great book called Blue Highways over a year ago about a writer who did a circular cross country road trip in the U.S. and he took - as best he could - smaller roads, the "blue highways" of old road maps.

Lot of places he visited were seemingly stuck in time or in their twilight years before merging with a metropolis, turning into unincorporated areas or ghost towns, or being consumed by a new highway. (New and/or re-routed railroads used to kill off towns in the American history before that - in some cases whole towns moved). It was written in 1981 but parts of it could have seemingly taken place decades before. The are towns and neighborhoods that I know personally via friends and family that were pretty much the same faces for 10-20 years or more essentially dissipate in a couple years. A death or two, a couple people move then suddenly 5 years later and it's a "different neighborhood." In a grand sense the UK and US have been pretty fortunate. With some exceptions - I lived in the UK from 1999-2001 and I remember talking to some women who left London in the war (Tooting specifically) and just never moved back.  In the U.S. the African-American population migrated significantly from rural areas to cities in the 20th century. World wars and massive upheavals and revolutions shifted huge populations in other countries. In Japan there was essentially a collective social existential crisis after the war that's evident in much of their pop culture. 

  On 1/26/2021 at 9:44 PM, chenGOD said:

I still think one of the key turning points in my musical development is finding the Dead Kennedys' record "Plastic Surgery Disasters" in the main branch of my public library when I was in grade 4 (so 1984-85) and taking it out cause of the weird cover.

my neon pink Lance Mountain Future Primitive deck (w/ gullwing trucks and matching rat bones)

Jello Biafra would get a kick out of that. There's an interview with him where he mentions how bootlegs of their music in SE Asia had the Union Jack to indicate it was "punk"

There's a treasure trove of IG accounts that just post 70s/80s era skateboard photos, it's glorious.

I'm pretty happy about the German Unity and how the East flourishes now that it is free of dictatorship. Pretty happy about the existence of the EU, too.

seems a lot of problems would go away if people just gave up the internet. who's going to go first??

  On 1/27/2021 at 3:39 AM, joshuatxuk said:

Jello Biafra would get a kick out of that. There's an interview with him where he mentions how bootlegs of their music in SE Asia had the Union Jack to indicate it was "punk"

There's a treasure trove of IG accounts that just post 70s/80s era skateboard photos, it's glorious.

So much love for Jello. I saw him when he came through Edmonton for his “High Priest of Harmful Matter” spoke word tour. I think I was 15 then, maybe 16. Such a massive influence on my outlook on life at the time. 
 

I met a bunch of punks in Myanmar when I was there. Sad to say, most of them were just assholes. As in they saw punk as an excuse to be an asshole to all. 
 

An example of how the internet has changed things: back in the day when skating was going through its big first wave outside of Cali, some reporters from the local rag interviewed a bunch of older kids, who proceeded to give their names as Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero and Christian Hosoi (maybe, not sure on the last one). So of course the paper ran the story that these guys were skating in Edmonton, and people lost their minds. Great prank that wouldn’t be possible these days. 

i find it hard to separate childhood nostalgia from legitimate memories of eras.  i know that the child's brain interprets data differently.  you can experience this on psychedelics where you can see the world as if you're remembering a good memory from days long gone.  no two peoples memories of the era are the same. i remember reading once that as you age your brain forgets negative memories and remembers positive ones more, so the far past seems sweeter.

born in 91

when i look back at my life thus far, it almost feels like it's divided into three distinct sections: pre-internet, pre-social media (post-internet), and current.

recently i've had this feeling of longing for the "pre internet" days. but now in reading these replies and thinking about my answer to OPs question, i realize i've been mostly just longing for the "pre-social media" days. reading all these replies has jogged my memory a bit.

i love the internet. stuff like wikipedia, youtube, google maps lol....it's nuts...and incredibly useful. (imagine explaining any of that shit to someone 150 years ago)

it's the social media that sucks (imo)

hypothetical: what would happen to the world if all of a sudden facebook, twitter, instagram etc. seized to exist? would the world collapse? would the world change for the better?

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you can experience this on psychedelics where you can see the world as if you're remembering a good memory from days long gone. 

ive been micro dosing mushrooms recently and have noticed this exact feeling. it's incredible. the only way i can describe it is by saying it feels like the feeling you get when you remember a good memory from your childhood, but that feeling is being felt in the present moment by your adult self.

I miss looking forward to something - nowadays you can preorder anything and play/watch/listen to it the day it comes out. I miss having to go out of my way to get this thing. The act of being spontaneous is way less exciting now and requires little to no effort since you simply click "buy" and that's it.
I miss being a kid and calling my local video game store every single day or 3 months if they had gotten Worms yet.

I miss going through catalogues and seeing that the Star Wars Trilogy has been released on VHS and asking my parents to drive me to the store so I can buy it.

I miss being told "dinner's ready!".

I miss long school holidays.

I miss not having to worry about social media.

I miss not having to worry.

I miss having stupid problems.

I miss having problems only a grown up could fix.

I miss not being a grown-up.

I miss my old dog.

I miss the feeling of discovering new things.

I miss not knowing what money means.

I miss having zero responsibilites.

  On 1/27/2021 at 8:14 AM, Squee said:

I miss looking forward to something - nowadays you can preorder anything and play/watch/listen to it the day it comes out. 

This is why I still buy vinyl.

I miss the blockbuster experience tbh? Going to the video store with whatever family I had, choosing a movie and committing to it. 

i miss not being a massive cunt 

  On 1/27/2021 at 11:43 AM, brian trageskin said:

i miss not being a massive cunt 

 

You’re not that much of a cunt.

  On 1/27/2021 at 8:14 AM, Squee said:

I miss the feeling of discovering new things.

Do you not discover new things anymore?

  On 1/27/2021 at 7:58 AM, mister miller said:

when i look back at my life thus far, it almost feels like it's divided into three distinct sections: pre-internet, pre-social media (post-internet), and current.

For me it's like: no home computer, home computer without a connection to outside, BBSs accessed with a modem (that sometimes supported email and Usenet but not real time internet connection), dial-up internet with hourly billing, 24/7 ethernet connection at home and finally internet connection in my pocket anywhere I go. Then just incrementally more services and things you can do in internet.

I got my first email address around 92 or 93. But the local BBS synched the emails once per night so if I wrote an email to somebody it would reach the recipient the following day and then their reply would reach me the next day after that at the earliest. But it was still pretty amazing to send an email to someone on a different continent and it would reach them in 24 hours.

I miss just hanging out with my friends for hours and having no plan and virtually no responsibilities or obligations. 
Additionally, I miss literally EVERYONE not having a cell phone or internet/email/social media and that feeling of peaceful solitude without the feeling that a call or text was going to yank you out of an experience. It was much easier to be fully present at one time. I think I wouldn’t be as neurotic as I am if I never experienced the contrast in the world pre-cellphone/internet and the word, post. 

Also, even though the internet has made tons of music more accessible, I miss the feeling of hunting for import / limited edition singles, EPs & records. 
Finding rare shit was a real treasure sometimes. 

Remember the time when people who spent a few hours of their time each day on internet were said to have an internet addiction and even directed to rehab? lol