- Watch tv.
- Read a book.
- Play single-player pc games.
- Literally go outside and touch grass.
There’s something to be said for browsing TV. Having favorites channels and recalling between two different shows between commercials. Sucks if commercials were synced.
Like, some films I wouldn’t put on voluntarily but I’d watch if I caught it on you know? Also found a lot of new stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise seen.
It’s interesting how some movies suck you in even though they’re definitely aren’t your thing.
Back in the 80s TV where I lived used to show Bollywood films at about 1am, which was when I got home from work. So I started watching this film, which was apparently a romance. Sparky career woman rejects advances of handsome fellow. Everyone starts singing and dancing. Ok, a musical then. Thugs burst in and shoot the place up. Woman’s father is killed, she swears vengeance. Uh ok… Local politician tries to shut down newspaper our heroine has just inherited, handsome fellow intervenes. More singing and dancing, ending in fireworks! which is apparently Bollywood for hot sex. Plot twist, handsome fellow is actually a baddie! I had to stop watching at 4am, no idea how it ended up.
When in the bathroom, the marketing and ingredients to all the shampoos were read.
Some people had magazine racks next to the toilet. There was a whole Seinfeld episode about George taking a book into the bathroom.
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, new book annually, great way to pass the time on the toilet.
Some tropes of the 80s and 90s: Teenagers ignoring their family while listening to a Walkman. Dads reading the newspaper and ignoring their family. Moms talking on the landline phone with friends and neighhbors. Nerds reading comic books. Dads playing golf. Mom shopping. Teens just “hanging out” at some random place like a parking lot, near a lake, under a bridge, behind the band hall, etc. Smoking. Crossword puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. Cards.
I have learned a lot about you, looking through your post history. Would you mind looking through mine?
the fuck
I don’t know, but I looked through your post history and I was rather less impressed. :(
Me too buddy, me too
We used to interact physically with other people…
User name checks out!
At 10pm on a weekday? I mean I get chatting to your significant other about stuff but outside of that I don’t see anything happening even if we removed phones from the equation.
They used to have these things called “books”, before they were all banned.
LMAO…
That’s not physically interacting with people though?
You’d be surprised how many phone calls took place at that time.
Mayne talking about a show, or chatting someone up, etc. You were bored, so a phone was great.
Fair enough.
I didn’t consider a phone call from a dumb phone as human contact. Guess it goes to show how much I conflate phone with smart phone now.
Go to bed early, sleep well, wake up for a whole new day feeling refreshed.
I mean that’s not interacting with other people on a weeknight is all haha.
I don’t feel bad texting (or replying here late at night) but I wouldn’t go knock on my neighbors’s door past 8 and expect to talk to them or anything like that.
Read books, read newspapers, chat on the land-line phone for hours.
Before the cliché of everyone being with their faces in smartphones there were clichés about husbands who do nothing but read newspapers all day, or teenage daughters that massively inflate the phone bill because she’s talking with her friends for hours, or children with square eyes watching brain rotting cartoons all day.
Sometimes, you just had to suffer being bored. And it gave you time to really think.
God that was the worst. Nothing good on TV. Nothing good to eat in the fridge. Too hot to go for a walk. It’s a school night, so your friends can’t come out to play yet. Just sitting there staring at the street as cars go by.
Reading books. Not audiobooks. Not podcasts. Books.
Thinking quietly is an occupation.
Yeah, why work for free?
We had something like e-readers and they didn’t need recharging as they were made out of dead trees. But each one held just one book, so you had to take a bunch of them to the bathroom with you.
Readers Digest contained multiple books in one volume
They were abridged though.
Right. There were also Ace Doubles, but you had to be good at reading upside down if you wanted to use both halves.
This reminds me of the time I checked out all the Dune books from the library, they were all hardbacks and the stack was nearly 2 feet high. The librarian was like, “You’re not going to read all that before they’re due” She was right but she let me check them all out anyway.
Phone bad book gud
Had conversations. Went outside. Did stuff. Had real hobbies. People were much less lame. Smartphones aren’t even smart. They just have The internet. If they were smart, people wouldn’t spend the entire time scrolling through dumb shit
And there are articles from newspapers decades ago complaining about people reading and not socializing. Some people just don’t want to socialize as much as others. It doesn’t make them wrong, it makes them different.
I remember reading any text i found while beeing on toilette when i was a kid(even shampoo ingredients).
Ah, the panic of having to use the bathroom so severely you can’t make it to your book or magazine in time. Oh look, I wonder what Methyllaurelsulfate does?
I always thought the bathroom reader books were tacky and stupid, then a I got a couple and they came in clutch so many times.
Now that I have a phone, I think it’s kinda gross to have items out for everyone to touch while using the toilet. Weird how perception changes.
Methylisothiazolinone, what mysteries do you hide?
yea same I was reading everything that vaguely resembled a string of characters
I used to grab anything I could to read when taking a shit. Even reading shampoo bottle labels. Now I’m here typing this mess to you guys as I take a dump.
I prefer the phrase ‘giving a dump’, because I sure don’t seem to be taking anything away from the transaction.
Alas I have digressed. I too indulged in the literary expositions of the shampoo bottle. Conditioner only on Fridays.
Same. I’d go through cabinets to find shit to read.
Pinch it and GTFO! Others need to use the bathroom too!
Over the last two decades we have reduced the amount of time spent to get many of the items we need. Since we can now order online from our homes we don’t have to go out and get them, this frees up a reasonable chunk of time.
Also, over the last 50 or so years we have lost many 3rd places. A 3rd place is where you would spend your time that is not work or home. A bar, community center, an arcade…ect. those were a common place to spend time socializing.
Finally, items like reading and watching TV filled a lot of time. From reading the newspaper to getting the local news. Channel surfing was a big thing for a while. You would cycle through channels until you found something you wanted to watch, you could cycle channels for a while before finding something, so that took up a large chunk of time.
- Work more.
- Go to church.
- Go to a witch burning.
- Participate in a crusade.
- From which century are you asking?
Read.
Television was actually fun to watch. Magazines were actually fun to read. Video games were actually fun to play. Hell, playing outside was fun. Playing with toys was fun (even as an adult). Spending time with users on early internet forums was also very fun. Music was much more aesthetically pleasing to listen to (at least the hits of the 00s were, imo). We fidgeted with literally anything we could think of. Pens, rulers, balls (it’s not what you think), toys, even our own fingers.
It was really easy to get bored back then too, but at least it was really easy to escape boredom back then.
Magazines were well written, articles were new and fresh. The CNN 24 news cycle brought mass distribution of the news but before that you tuned in for the scheduled news hour you liked
Back when you had to tune in for basically everything
I remember being excited for pc gamer to show up in the mail
Those were the good ol’ days.
Read a book, play card/board/video games, watch movies, listen to radio, go to a public space in your community (parks, squares, etc.)
