Late 90s/early 2000s were the best years ever, and then we screwed it all up
Local Link | Content link | Reddit Link
r/nosurfu/badibilder8 (355)

-Remember when you used to really feel things? Not like "I am so involved in /insert whatever superficial social media drama/trend is happening right now/", that's all just damn ridiculous.

-I mean the feels that you had when mom was making you eggs for breakfast while you were just sitting there, ass on the floor in front of a big old boxy Sony TV and watching Scooby-Doo on Boomerang, while simultaneously smashing your Donkey Kong toy against your little bro's rubber dinosaur, cause both of you peeked through the door while your folks watched Godzilla the night before. Of course, you are tired now, but you have a playdate arranged with that kid down the block while Mom and Dad work, so you are psyched anyway. All four of you pile into your Dad's Volvo wagon while Mom whooshes your backpack with toys from the front into the backseat. The playdate proceeds to last long into the evening, in which time you guys have built a Lego city that covers most of the flat areas in the living room, finished off a large pizza and Mario Kart 64'ed so much that your thumbs got sore.

-You were too old for that? Ok, millenial vibes time. You just got home from school in your beat up Corolla that you bought from money you earned working at Blockbuster video last summer. Prom is in 3 months, so naturally you are psyched. You get into your room, pop a CD into the boombox and fire up the AOL till lunch time to make plans for tonight. It is the same old, just doing squat in the McDonalds parking lot with your friends but it never gets old. Just gotta remember to charge your Nokia.

-Still no? Alright, moving on to Gen X.
Kids are at a sleep-over. You got home from work, filing up the car on the way and not ending up bankrupt in the process, and sat on the couch. Your college friends are coming tonight for dinmer. You should start dusting, but the new episode of Seinfeld is more important to catch right now. Wife nags you at first but then joins you on the couch since dinner is already done. Cleaning ends up lasting the last 15 panicked minutes, you eat dinner, after which you head out for some club music since you are still too young to stay in all night.

-I may be over-exaggarating in these, I was just a kid back then and saw the world through rose colored glasses, but you get the point.

-Now, what is the common denominator in these stories, or lack thereof? That's right, no social media or smartphones in sight. You had to be present and cultivate relationships with people, and fuck up or succeed in the real world. Now, since a lot of our life moved onto the internet and social media, (which btw I hold no grudge against per se, it is useful a lot of the time), it all got twisted up and ate our sense of the real world. Most things now just feel like an imitation of reality, which now warps in ways it shouldn't, just like our values.

-We were fine without all that. There was just the right amount of technology to be helpful and not take over our lives.

-We should try that again sometime.

Comments (97)

I couldn't agree more. One thing I remember about those days was that everything just felt different. As in there was just more reality to everyday experiences than there is now.

I often thought that this numbing to experience happens naturally as you get older, because you simply have more life that you have lived, and so experiences donā€™t stand out as much unless they are extraordinary. However, when I talk to my elderly parents, or others who have never really used social media or the Internet much, they still experience the world in much the same way, as a deeply lived, felt experience.

I have found myself craving this feeling. Something about just waking up and not reaching for any gadgets, just staring at the window/celing and noticing the light, just lying there letting your thoughts happen. The more I distance myself from social media and my phone the more I have this and it is priceless. Feels like the 90s again.

Apparently, there is a place in Virginia where wifi is band because it might interfer with this high tech telescope. I would love to go there!!!

Or just go to Nevada

So true! I thought it was only me noticing this

I have two hobbies where i am literally the youngest person at the clubs(magic and stained glass) and the generation differences are stark. Most of the people are in their 40s-60s and actually seem to enjoy living...even if they have a smart phone, they arent on it 24/7; they have actual hobbies and take more interest in say driving(I live in an area that is huge into car culture) or going to thw beach and having fun. So many younger people just aren't present at all...in my physilogy lab th younger peope do do their work, but they will us their phone while doing it. I don't blame them for this at all, and our teacher activily encourages it which drives me crazy.

I feel exactly the same!!

I think since 2015 we are definitely in simulation

My least favorite part is something I donā€™t see many people talk aboutā€¦

There was not nearly as much pressure to be ā€œaestheticā€ and it was okay if part of your house was rickety. Not everything needed to color coordinate and look great and stay the cleanest of clean every single day. Iā€™m not saying everyone lived like slobs, but some dust, a little disorganization etc all just was more widely acceptable.

Now everyone has to have an Instagram house/apartment and a perfectly clean area to feel comfy enough to have anyone over.

Just my observation.

so you were born in ~2001? at best you were doing kid (vs baby/toddler) activities by 2005-06, is that accurate?

2000, and I get the world-through-kid-eyes bias, but I remember how other, older people used to be compared to now. And when I see toddlers holding a smartphone, I am like "Damn, I used to play in the dirt with toy cars at that age, kids are missing so much".

sorry, i more so mean your age doesnā€™t seem like it lines up with even the first scene you described. iā€™d imagine your experience as a young kid in 2005 to be more like ~ gamecube had been out for a while and the wii was about to drop, ATLA and ben 10 just aired their first season and Madagascar just came out in theaters. most people were walking around listening to music on ipods. maybe one of your friends parents got a groundbreaking new LCD flat screen TV and you are excited to go play some super smash Melee at their house

edit: playing outside in the dirt is just part of childhood whatever era youā€™re born in

Yeah, that is understandable, I do remember all the things you describe being out when I was in school, but by that time, that magic feeling was alredy semi-lost for me, and died off completely around 2013. Last truly good bit was MinecraftšŸ˜….

Other thing is, my memory goes a really long way back into my childhood, with memories as far back as 2003. Combined with the fact that the place I come from used to be slightly behind on some trends so the first scene is pretty accurate + personal experiences I had later on which rendered the 2010s as a pretty tumultous time, I tend to stick to the early memories as best.

Edit: And yeah, since it I see it less and less, I am happy whenever I see kids actually doing stuff outside.

it had crossed my mind that not everyone is fortunate to grow up using the latest stuff (i was somewhere in the middle, though that dropped off around middle school)

also my memory is shit, so i hardly remember anything pre-elementary school

same here dude, born in the same year as you and remember as far back as 2002.

I just now learned that the first LCD TV was in 1984 and it was one a portable TV. Don't forget that's also around when the Blu-ray Vs HDDVD thing would start and is also when HDTV was slowly becoming a thing.

what! 84? interesting that it took so long for them to explode in popularity

The screen was tiny and not as good as they are now.

Born in mid 90s here. I remember life being great but I think it really went downhill when I got internet in 08 and started porn lol

Now I have anxiety and see life as useless.

Hopefully a good detox will help make my brain sensitive again.

Detox works. Not only will you be able to enjoy things again you will get a bunch of other benefits. Be prepared for some depression though depending how long you do it. I usually start feeling depressed around week 2 due to the brain rewiring.

Me too man. If you do the detox, let me know how it went.

Sometimes I have those same problemsā€¦ so you think it could be caused by just getting too much dopamine?

This is the next industrial revolution we learned about in textbooks. Technology in 1760 completely messed up the primitive lives of everyone all over the world for almost 100 years until it stabilized for about 150 years. I feel like 2009 was the year that entire lifestyle of physical friendships and working a minimum wage job to afford a house died. Humanity upgraded to microprocessors with online cyborg lives that have a loose connection to reality and why nobody places much emphasis on owning physical objects anymore. Why would anyone want to work hard to achieve something when the internet has all the dopamine your brain could ever want? Mega corporations stepped in and bought up all the property our parents left behind. We will rent our lives for the rest of eternity.

Then I just sit back and listen to the earth and know I have zero control over where and when I was born. This is life now, these are my friends, I am a sack of water and bones pushing sausage sticks around to hopelessly connect to the internet while computers are transferring all my metadata around data centers at terabits per second.

This can be summarized in one song I will never forget.
Deadmau5 - The Veldt

So depressing yet sadly true.

I think about this a lot too, Iā€™m definitely fortunate to have born at least after dawn of modern medicine and the like, but I think that historians will look back on this period as incredibly turbulent. The world is coming to grips with globalization and hyper-communication, and weā€™re really not ready for it at all. Itā€™ll definitely level itself out but we have to deal with the consequences in the interim.

Iā€™d love to be an baby boomer (at least in the West), for most of their lives they were able to take advantage of all of the benefits of technological progress and also live in a world that was so much more physically connected than we ever are now. Theyā€™ll get to die off before the worst of it comes to pass.

We will rent our lives for the rest of eternity.

yes starting this fall with apple subscriptions just for an iphone lol.

Very interesting thought

I havenā€™t been on Reddit in a long while and feel better about myself.

I listen to more audiobooks and podcasts now. My mind is connected to this earth and all the frequencies above it. Once a day I spend a hour just meditating and thinking about my life and what is required to improve it. I write it down and collect all my thoughts on Sunday.

The best thing I ever did was turn down social media and unfollowed people that spent all their time arguing.

I was thinking about deleting Instagram,its very time consuming and it wasnt around in 2000s anyway

I - I remember

You're so right. It's weird, I feel like I'm coming out of a fog lately. I've been really leaning into no surf/ no phone as much as I can lately. I found this station that plays only 90s/00s rock and it's brought me back to a different time and reminded me of a different me and how it used to be, if that makes sense. It feels like a different world or reality back then. It was so much better. So so so much better

Would you mind telling what is this station?

It's called Turbo on SiriusXM. We just got a car that has a free 3 month subscription. Definitely takes you down memory lane, but it really did feel different back then. It's not nostalgia, it's different

[deleted]

grew up in the 2000s here, I agree they were just better times, from time to time I think about them, and wish I could go back

I don't look at the world with rose-colored glasses. My childhood was mostly horrible. I was homeless in the 80's, and spent the 90's just trying to survive. I guess I had some good times in the 90's, but my life was actually much better in the 00's, after I ditched an abusive relationship and moved to Germany. I don't feel like my life is much worse now, either, except for the Covid lockdowns. I was late to adopt social media, and my BF does not use any. On the other hand, social media has ruined many people's lives, especially the Boomers who went off the deep end on Facebook and have become Internet Zombies. I suppose I ought to be grateful that I am a cynical, untrusting pessimist. I can read conspiracy theories online, have a laugh and go outside in the sunshine with no repercussions.

The rave scene and all that MDMA back then, ringing your dealer on an old Nokia. Good times

The way you can still do that

Boomers would say it was the 70's. It's just the rose tainted nostalgia talking.

Right...also...for whom was it really so "great"? I think I'd rather be gay nowadays than go back to being bullied in school with no escape.

If you don't like the Internet, you can log off.

Not sure what sexual preference has to do with a discussion on technology thought the ages, but I can see it's important to you.

Youā€™re just describing being young. In the future, gen Z will feel just as nostalgic about today. Life is so much more intense when youā€™re young.

yeah this is just called nostalgia

Partially agree, but I am only 21, and have felt this way for years.

You're 21 saying the 90s were the best years. You weren't even born then, how are you making this call...

Still applies. Nothing beats being a little kid. I was depressed as fuck in highschool and early twenties. Completely normal to feel nastolgic about being a kid even at your age.

What happened later, are you doing better now?

definitely not as intense but I still struggle with depression mostly seasonally. I thought I was an anime and videogame shut in and learned that I enjoy those things but being outside and finding outdoor hobbies is huge for my mental health. Things are better and I am finally graduating with an Engineering degree in a month so things are better.

I remember when I was little I played with all sorts of toys and was always doing engaging activities like drawing and going to the park. These days parents just pawn a cellphone off to their little kids to quiet them. My mom had to actually be engaged with me since she didnā€™t have that option, and also cared about my development. Iā€™m the last generation before iphones took over since the iphone came out the year I was born.

A lot of people may disagree about the nostalgia part, but personally, I believe that as a species, weā€™ve become numb to feelings. We canā€™t feel anymore about small things ā€” about the sunlight hitting the window, or a shade of blue, or a new color.

To me, that offline feeling of being disconnected from the unlimited stimuli (internet & social media as a whole), and being with whatever you have. A movie, a book, or even few people in front of you. That limited-ness, the disconnection from a virtual world to connect with what life gave you, however limited it is, but itā€™s the source of most of your feelings. Even if you disconnected from social media tomorrow, life will give you enough few people (family, friends, spouse, kids, colleagues) to experience everything.

And coming back to the point of nostalgia, as a Gen Z, 20 years from now on, when I look back, the moments of me being glued to my device, stalking the people I want to talk, instead of talking to them - having known everything back then information wise and not sharing myself. Not going out or making those mistakes or even doing silly things like laying on the kitchen floor (better with a friend) - I wouldnā€™t feel like these years were something memorable. I would always, always remember those magical moments spent with someone, or myself, offline, talking, sitting, or watching things together, listening to music together, no matter how tiny they were. I still do, having everyone reachable to me and texting back and forth, I am nostalgic for a conversation I had with a friend two weeks ago when we met and talked and had a great time, because it made me feel what Iā€™ll actually remember.

People SHOULD be able to criticise technology without being told to shut up, and wuit living in the past. I really wish this idea that evrythig needs to be easy, convenient and efficient would die out already. How can anyone appreciate anything if you are constnatly fed things, and can't actually explore iti.

šŸ’Æ

I know rose tinted goggles are a thing; but I completely agree with you. It is jarring at just how much everything completly revolves around technology...and i am tired of having to pretend that it is totally awesome that technology is pretty much domnate every aspect in our lives.

The other day I was overwhelmed with so much going on in my life, so I was just lying there with my sweater folded up a few inches away from my face. The feeling was a mix of overwhelm, nothing to do, things to figure out, etc. Since I rarely use screens anymore, this type of just being in the present is becoming a more and more common occurrence.

Anyway I don't know what came over me, but I suddenly had a flashback to my old comforter (that I suddenly remembered in detail) and bedroom set from 2000 ish, that I hadn't thought about in years.

It was almost like I was transported back to my lazy summer days back then; the feeling of being totally in the present despite negative emotion, yet being distraction-free. Staring off into nothing, just staring at folds of fabric with no need/desire to do anything else had been so lost to me for almost 20 years.

Born in the 80s, childhood in the 90s.

I agree those years were the best. There was a general sense of optimism brought about NOT BY computer. We were quite poor to afford computer anyway back then. We went out, meet people, played with other kids at the playground, make ourselves silly. There was no pressure to perform, just did our best.

Things went downhill for me when I joined fb in 2007. We didnt know the dangers of social media to our privacy and mental wellbeing and there is no turning back. We started comparing ourselves with other people, becoming more envious, and basically it is apocalyptic.

The only way to turn back is to break up these faang companies. Inconveniencing ourselves, but I am convinced it is for the better.

I agree with the premise that life before phones was probably better however mostly what your describing just sounds like nostalgia.

The early 2000s involved a lot of hateful post-9/11 bigotry disguised as pseudo-patriotism. Americans were clamoring to invade and bomb the shit out of the Middle East, and you couldnā€™t question it without being accused of wanting the terrorists to win. A lot of my friends who are Muslim or simply have skin that is brown were treated like absolute shit.

It was a really fucked up time. Itā€™s cool that you were a kid and didnā€™t really watch it all unfold like that, but it was a tremendously fucked up time for many, many people.

Kids from my high school got blown up in Iraq since the army recruiters preyed upon the poor and harassed the seniors nearly daily about signing up to die.

I can appreciate nostalgia, but Iā€™m not gonna overwrite my lived memories.

I knew there would eventually be a comment like this, and I completely understand. Sorry that happened to you guys, and it is true that I ride the nostalgia horse here, after all, I was just a kidt then, and far far away from America. I had a Muslim friend in school too, and he wasn't treated all that good either, so sad.

The world is just dark now. Culture is dark. People are scared of the future. The future is bleak. Weā€™re all hypnotised by phones. I donā€™t feel half as funny and happy as I did 8 years ago. The last 5/6 years hve been such a dark slog.

Agreed. Even just three years ago was better. A decade ago seems like a dream. Great name BTW!

Iā€™m really curious about all this. Like, is it real or is just because weā€™re older? Is it because we are online more and exposed to a lot of shit? Do ā€˜normalā€™ people feel this way?

Something I wonder about myself because I'm not a normal person. My guess is that normal people are more caught up in their own daily micro-dramas rather than looking at the big picture. But I think on some level anyone with any intelligence knows that things aren't right on a macro-level they just can't comprehend it and if they can they have no idea what to do about it. I personally believe that we have been in a slow collapse.

How do you figure that youā€™re not ā€˜normalā€™? Maybe most people donā€™t call themselves normal? My family tell me I think too much tho and Iā€™m a jazz musician so that automatically makes me a bit odd.

But yeah we are in a slow decline

I don't really live like a normal person but I don't want to put a lot of details about myself here on Reddit. I do like jazz a lot though. That's cool you are a musician. What instrument do you play?

2019 was last year everything was somewhat normal

I feel this my dude...

100000010%, thank you so much for putting this into words.

I honestly believe that the internet should be free considering how you need it for pretty much anything these days. Phone, TV, gaming and needing it to sign applications for jobs, etc.

Every generation says this about the generation before them.

Dude I'm a millennial and I wasn't old enough to drive until the early 2010's

Think you have your generation descriptions off

I member

I didnā€™t even exist then so šŸ’€ Iā€™ve been exposed to technology my whole life, I never hung out with kids in my neighbourhood or went outside that often during my youth cause of how shy I was. Would spend whole days on the Internet instead

You missed out so much so make sure your kids donā€™t

Meh. I donā€™t think I did tbh, I would just hang out with kids from school or my siblings instead of kids in my neighbourhood exactly

Ya'll whippersnappers.

Nostalgia.

As a child I remember being told by my mother about her grandmother, who was born in the 1880s, and had been taught by her church that radio would spell the death of human interaction. It didn't. When they wanted to talk to each other they just turned it off.

Technology isn't antisocial unless we allow it to take over our lives. That's something to be very cautious about, I agree. But the need for human interaction is far older and more powerful than technology, and it's more important to us. So I don't worry too much about these distractions. I just have to remind myself to turn it off sometimes, and I do. It's a tool, a lens, through which we see the world, but if you keep in mind that that is all technology is, it takes up much less space in your mind. It is reduced to its proper size: that of useful tool, not a world. And with that I'm going to go read a book.

I need to remind myself ot the same thing. What bothers me the most is how much technology is quickly replacing people. I think it is sad that so many valuable skills are being lost; and so may people just seem ok with this. But the tech it self isn't bad...it is that people in power don't give a shit about how it effects the rest of us.

People were addicted to the internet back in the early 90s so it isn't really that different. Back in the 1960s people were addicted to TV, addicted to newspapers, addicted to everything people are addicted to now. Wasting your time with bullshit is not new or the internet's fault. You become addicted to things because of your own problems.

Why don't you just get on with life instead of moaning about social media and the internet on a social media site on the internet? You're enabling your own addiction by being here.

[deleted]

There weren't psychologists helping write newspapers who studied human behavior and optimized it so that it is addictive as possible.

But I also agree that the Internet can be very useful if we learn how to use it correctly.

Because the target audience for this opinion is on the internet, people who are out there enjoying the real world don't need this.

I love the fact you don't think he should be complaining but here you are complaining about his complaining

Middle-aged person here. No, this period is different and worse. Also, the internet was very different before e-commerce. Addiction is a science now and there's a lot of money involved in expanding it. Will power could work with TV (also hardly any channels until the 80s) but the smartphone is really omnipresent and increasingly unavoidable as many more functions and services are connected to it.

What are you doing on this sub with that mentality?

Eh, like all of us, being dragged into the whole thing then complaining about it. Just had to spill this out.

People were addicted to newspapers? Everywhere you went people had their noses in a newspaper instead of enjoying the out doors?

I guess you could go to Borders and read all the newspapers there?

That doesn't sound like an accurate analogy that you made. You can't really compare newspaper reading to people being glued to their phones.

In fact, I don't think newspapers even had that addictive quality to them in the first place.

I was completely joking and trying to poke fun at the person saying people were addicted to newspapers.

Oh, LOL. Sorry. I should've paid attention better.

How can someone be addicted to newspapers? TV also wasn't as addictive because ther was only a few channals and even in the 90s stopped airing at certaint ies.

Attention all newcomers: Welcome to /r/nosurf! We're glad you found our small corner of reddit dedicated to digital wellness. The following is a short list of resources to help you get started on your journey of developing a better relationship with the internet:

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

I mean it actually sucked really bad but ok

That's not what everyone's childhood was like. My level of connection to other people has only gone up with social media.

2000 was the peak of human evolution in my opinion