What I would give to go back in time and relive the days before the internet and mobile phones.

[Emmi]

I constantly wish I could travel back in time to my youth and relive the days and years where internet and mobile phones weren't a thing yet and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. Like using floppy disks, buying gaming magazines with a demo disc, playing board games, sitting around a CRT TV with the PlayStation 1 hooked into it and playing a round of Gran Turismo thinking it is the most groundbreaking thing ever, etc.

Does anyone feel the same or is it just me not being able to let the past behind?

[universetwisters]

I wouldn't! I lost internet for a weekend because of a hurricane and I went crazy.

[Miss Malevolent]

4 hours ago, Emmi said:

I constantly wish I could travel back in time to my youth and relive the days and years where internet and mobile phones weren't a thing yet and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. Like using floppy disks, buying gaming magazines with a demo disc, playing board games, sitting around a CRT TV with the PlayStation 1 hooked into it and playing a round of Gran Turismo thinking it is the most groundbreaking thing ever, etc.

Does anyone feel the same or is it just me not being able to let the past behind?

Nope. I liked watching Maverick in 4DX and I'm enjoying it in 4K on an 85" Sony with 7.1 channel Dolby sound system.

I'm a technophile so I enjoy new gadgets. 

That said, maybe you should do a "techcation". People will take a couple of weeks or a month put their phones or other gadgets In a lockbox and decompress from modern day connection.

[ddarko12]

I love modern tech, and generally do not agree when people say it has made everything worse. But I do like the idea of genuinely connecting with people without use of it. And I would like to take a real break from all of it but it's harder and harder these days.

[Jason]

I'm not a prolific phone user by any means, I can keep it in my pocket and just chill, I could very easily live without one without issue.

 

I do have a nostaligia for the mid 2000's internet personally though. It was a period of time where the net was built largely around small (by todays standards) communities and there were loads of them which made it easier to find one where you fit in, and because each community was small it made moderation much easier which helped with keeping the toxicity low - tho the internet has never been toxicity free of course. GTAF is in many ways a good example of what I mean, forums like this are basically dinosaurs at this point and like dinosaurs they're pretty damn rare nowadays, so it's sort of a case of cherishing places like this while they still exist.

 

The mid 2000's was also a time where gaming culture and the "content creators" scene was still very raw and it was just an all round more interesting time for both aspects of what are now gigantic parts of mainstream culture, which is very clickbaity these days as I'm sure everyone knows.

 

That's as far as my nostaligia goes mind you, I don't miss playing games on old hardware or anything like that, as I enjoy experiencing and using new technology and hardware.

[Plage]

I'd throw away all the modern gadgets in a split second if could travel back.

 

And as mobile phones were mentioned. See how we used to party back in the days.

 

 

 

Today half the people would just stand a round taking pics and filming with their phones for Insta.

 

[Craigsters]

you mean  live  for the day when we wore levi red tab super slim jeans  and jean jacket and reebok  shoes, while listening  to are   two  hundred  dollar yellow water proof  sony sports walkingmen tape  cassette player, well listing to Led Zeppelin 4  or moby dick aka 1986, and went to the arcade to play pole position ?

Edited November 11, 2022 by Craigsters

[universetwisters]

Everyone’s talking about “nobody was glued to their phone back then”. Why would I wanna talk to strangers? Mom told me not to!!

[Laura91]

f*ck that.

 

I lived through the 80's as a child. It sucked. It is only seen as a good time by people who weren't there, in the popular cliques, or, some who will ignore the reality altogether because the ugly memories are too much for them to face.

[El Cavilldo]

It's not nostalgia, we just hate getting old. 

 

This is not 'I wish I went back to the time I was 20' but 'I wish to be 20 again'

[universetwisters]

1 hour ago, El Cavilldo said:

It's not nostalgia, we just hate getting old. 

 

This is not 'I wish I went back to the time I was 20' but 'I wish to be 20 again'

 

tbf I hated being ten years old but 2006 was one of the most aesthetically pleasing years imo. I wish I could've had a license, my own place, etc. to experience all of it without the restraints that come with being a literal child. But then again, if 26 year old me wishes I were 26 in 2006, then 26 year old me in 2006 would prob miss the 80s/early early 90s. So it's just a loop. Though it would be cool to experience that part of my childhood with the freedom of an adult tbh

[Pete4000uk]

I remember the late 80s!

 

 

[ddarko12]

On 11/15/2022 at 6:40 PM, Laura91 said:

some who will ignore the reality altogether because the ugly memories are too much for them to face.

This especially. As time moves on we sort of surpress our bad memories. There are many years I've regarded as outright terrible. And yet 4 years later you start remembering all of the good for some reason I guess because you've surpressed the bad memories for so long that you pretend they don't exist. I don't think I've ever pay money to go back in time for anything at all. Maybe just to make different life choices but that's it.

Edited November 17, 2022 by ddarko12

[Mexicola9302]

I liked the PS2/X-Box era the most, ppl still had normal mobile phones with just a bad low res camera, dual core computers, no social media insanity, no "influencers" they weren't even a thing back then. Ppl still had to download illegal copies from the internet instead of using affordable legal streaming. Amazon was just a regular internet shop compared to today.

 

Well in Germany everything was better back then. Now with the imported "refugees" from x different countries, the country is going to sh*t. We never had to have security guards in malls and other places before all the so uber friendly refugees came into the country. Yeah i miss the good old times, when everything was safe in smaller cities. But those days are gone, it's sad.

 

 

[Miekka]

Living here in Finland as a kid back in the 90s and 2000s I'd say was pretty much carefree and fun time despite what'd be going on in the "big world".

 

Only just a small bubble, in a way, in the "big world". Lovely country, but not during the "dark period" in November that is currently going on.........

 

Literally; in my family we did have internet and mobile phones, but not in the 90s though  That came to picture in the early to mid-2000s..

Edited November 21, 2022 by Korpi

[Thejeffster]

It would be cool for a day, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to go back in time thirty years ago and experience the 90s-2000s as a Adult. Starting in 1992 and all the way up to 2022. I think I could last, I mean before smartphones and widely accessible internet and all the things that came with it we still had cable TV, Video Games, Books, renting movies or going to the movies, hobbies like music and cars, hanging out with friends. All that type of stuff, it would suck knowing with the knowledge I know now how long I have to wait for the video games and TV shows and bands I enjoy now to become popular or even exist yet. I think it would be cool to do say maybe for a few weeks but I think it would kinda suck after awhile. I do like our current technology though, I could live without it but it would be a little bit more boring though in day to day life.

[Blue carpet]

On 11/9/2022 at 1:59 PM, Emmi said:

I constantly wish I could travel back in time to my youth and relive the days and years where internet and mobile phones weren't a thing yet and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. Like using floppy disks, buying gaming magazines with a demo disc, playing board games, sitting around a CRT TV with the PlayStation 1 hooked into it and playing a round of Gran Turismo thinking it is the most groundbreaking thing ever, etc.

Does anyone feel the same or is it just me not being able to let the past behind?

I feel ya I daydream alot about going back to the late 90's and doing alot of things different but most importantly I never appreciated the way the world was back then I miss it so bad I hate modern times with a passion.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Blue carpet

[.Ryan.]

It would be interesting to go back to the 1990s with the knowledge of what I have now just when things like the internet, social media etc were still in their infancy.

 

1996-1999 Is what I fondly remember the most. I was old enough to understand things, but it’s not so long ago it’s now a complete blur. 

Kind of crazy to think my old man turned 40 in 1999 and I’m not too far off that myself.

[universetwisters]

I wonder if, twenty years or so from now, if I’ll remember things from my childhood twenty years ago as vividly as I do now.

 

[tony da boss]

I don't know, I actually enjoy going on my phone all the time personally. I'm usually on Facebook a lot, I don't even post a lot I just get entertained by all the stuff that shows up in my feed. Also we wouldn't be able to go on GTAForums. 

[GTA-Biker]

I'd like to go back to late 90s or early 2000s,whether I'd experience it as a kid again,or as a 29 year old that I am right now.There was some modern-ish tech (cellphones, dial up internet, video games,etc.),but it wasn't as big part of our lives as today's tech.The stuff that was on TV (at least on local channels where I live) was better.I liked the music of those times better than the music from the past 10 years.Everything was cheaper than today,from a candy bar or a bag of chips to cars and gasoline.

Edited December 30, 2022 by GTA-Biker

[Vanzant]

You can literally do those things you want to do. Buy or find a free CRT TV. Hook up your old gaming station to it. Leave your cell phone in another room...There's so many ways to do this. You could dedicate a room to just old stuff like boomers do. Nothing is stopping you.

[Frabbi 01]

I miss it too. Mostly being a kid of course. All the old videogames, and there weren't tens of thousands of them. No stupid achievements making you play to completion. Instead we played because we wanted to. Searching for the secrets that we thought might be there, but had no way of truly looking into them. Maybe if we were lucky, there would be one or two guides out there. Maybe they would be incomplete... and then your dialup connection would drop and it would take an hour to reconnect!

 

Everyone saw the same movies, the same shows, listened to mostly the same music. We all knew all the references. You can make a reference to something from the 80s or 90s today and everyone will still get it. There was less to do in general, so everyone had more in common.

 

Everyone had the NES. Then you either had SNES or Genesis. We played the same games. Now, at least as an adult, getting though just a few games a year is tough. And they're massive. I would much rather have today's games of course, but this is about missing the old days.

 

Going outside! We actually went outside! Friends were around, and sometimes finding them was a challenge. Were they home? Outside somewhere? Already hanging out elsewhere? Who was around? Playing manhunt (not the videogame LOL) for hours. Maybe going to the pool (and leaving when parents started bringing their defecating toddlers in). Playing tennis, kickball, or just hanging out doing absolutely nothing. Waiting for the ice cream truck. Maybe we would bust out the Super Soakers and water ballons and have a war.

 

Not time period specific, but family too. As a kid you get dragged all over. Then slowly you no longer see your relatives, and within a couple decades half of them are dead, but anyway...

 

Met quite a few younger people that say they wish they were a 90s kid. And I tell them it was awesome as everyone says it was. Having one foot in the pre digital age and having the technology grow up with you is amazing.

 

Want to go back, but I wouldn't want to stay. We're too close to superhuman AI and life extension. I do think though, maybe in the future an AI powerful enough can embed itself in my mind and recreate everything stored inside as a simulation, and I can enter or exit this Matrix-like universe at will. Maybe I can see everyone I knew once again...

[Adam Jensen]

A lot of people feel the same. What they truly miss is being young again, being children and having no worries other than schoolwork. It's normal. But it doesn't mean that it's worse now than it was back then. You're just older and you have more responsibilities and less time for yourself. And all those things that were once new and exciting are now ordinary and they just don't have that spark, that magic that they had when you were a kid.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Creed Bratton

[Straypuft]

I miss life before social media.

[Graven]

On 11/9/2022 at 8:59 PM, Emmi said:

I constantly wish I could travel back in time to my youth and relive the days and years where internet and mobile phones weren't a thing yet and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. Like using floppy disks, buying gaming magazines with a demo disc, playing board games, sitting around a CRT TV with the PlayStation 1 hooked into it and playing a round of Gran Turismo thinking it is the most groundbreaking thing ever, etc.

Does anyone feel the same or is it just me not being able to let the past behind?

Close your phone, pull the network plug and use that old hardware, it still works.

[ddarko12]

I don't think people realize it's not as simple as that. 

[Straypuft]

22 hours ago, ddarko12 said:

I don't think people realize it's not as simple as that. 

True, for one thing, he would need to have home phone service.

[Cloudee]

Sounds crazy, cause I wasn't even born before the technical age, but I regularly disconnect on weekends, just turn everything off, these days I do housework etc cause that's life, but I still enjoy sitting outside and listening to the world around me.

 

I get a sense of calm when I'm just alone with the world and the wilderness.

[LongHairedFreakyGuy]

On 11/9/2022 at 6:59 PM, Emmi said:

I constantly wish I could travel back in time to my youth and relive the days and years where internet and mobile phones weren't a thing yet and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. Like using floppy disks, buying gaming magazines with a demo disc, playing board games, sitting around a CRT TV with the PlayStation 1 hooked into it and playing a round of Gran Turismo thinking it is the most groundbreaking thing ever, etc.

Does anyone feel the same or is it just me not being able to let the past behind?

 

As Vanz pointed out, there isn't really much you listed that you can't do these days, especially given I'm assuming you're an adult with the money and means to set all this up. Every month I add a decent amount of stuff to my retro gaming collection, and it's still just as good these days as it was back then, just minus all the excitement that surrounded the likes of secrets and myths (now easily debunked by the internet, but back then we're believed), or cheat codes galore. The only thing you mentioned that can't really be done these days is the collecting of gaming magazines that come with demo discs, but unfortunately time has moved on and we have more access than ever to test games out, be it early access or all the gaming subs. Demos still exist, just in a different format. Don't get me wrong, I've spent many a times thinking about trying to collect all the old PS magazines and the coinciding demo disc. I had a huge collection back in the day, having subscribed to pretty much all the big mags, from Gamesmaster to all the official mags too. Would spend hours just reading through all the latest previews and news. To an extent, I believe gaming journalism has gone downhill majorly these days. I still pick up the odd retro gaming mag whenever I see one. 

 

On 11/10/2022 at 2:19 AM, ddarko12 said:

I love modern tech, and generally do not agree when people say it has made everything worse. But I do like the idea of genuinely connecting with people without use of it. And I would like to take a real break from all of it but it's harder and harder these days.

 

Pretty much how I feel. To an extent, I enjoy having a smartphone, having everything readily available whenever I want it, as apposed to the days when you had to dial up to the Internet and every page took a day and age to load up. To argue with myself though, in some way I feel like modern Internet has killed attention spans, and back then I could spend a day just reading articles on a website, but now I feel anxious when I get to like the second paragraph of a long wall of text (ironic since I love reading). FOMO anxiety is a real thing these days, everyone believing they have to be in the loop of everything on the Internet or be left out. 

 

On the connecting with people part, I feel like even when you do talk to people these days, it tends to be about sh*t on the likes of Facebook or Tik Tok. All anyone talked about in my old job was Tik Tok and it genuinely bored me since I had no clue what they were on about. Even when people disconnect from their phone, they don't truly disconnect. 

 

It's sad these days seeing groups of friends all sat together, with their heads glued to their phone. 

 

On 11/10/2022 at 2:34 AM, Jason said:

I do have a nostaligia for the mid 2000's internet personally though. It was a period of time where the net was built largely around small (by todays standards) communities and there were loads of them which made it easier to find one where you fit in, and because each community was small it made moderation much easier which helped with keeping the toxicity low - tho the internet has never been toxicity free of course. GTAF is in many ways a good example of what I mean, forums like this are basically dinosaurs at this point and like dinosaurs they're pretty damn rare nowadays, so it's sort of a case of cherishing places like this while they still exist.

 

.

 

Said it previously, but it's what brought me back to posting here regularly. I'd grown tired of social media and what it currently entails (bots, no real attachment etc), and after deleting pretty much all social media (I really only have X and Reddit to follow news), I was craving that old feeling when you actually felt like you were having a real conversation with a real person, where disagreeing and debating didn't just result in getting called every name under the sun, but actually resulted in a worthy reply. Sites back then felt more 'dedicated' too, run by people who had a genuine interest in what they were writing, whereas as you mentioned, it all seems to be about getting the most traffic these days, with a clickbait article about 3 paragraphs long just to post about the latest rumour or whatever. 

 

Yes, toxicity has always been part and parcel of the internet, but these days it pretty draining seeing every Twitter thread just turn into a slagging match with derogatory stuff thrown around over the daftest things. The art of conversation has gone. 

 

On 11/16/2022 at 4:29 AM, El Cavilldo said:

It's not nostalgia, we just hate getting old. 

 

This is not 'I wish I went back to the time I was 20' but 'I wish to be 20 again'

 

Yes and no. For me, it's a lot of personal issues that started me on a little path of revolting against the modern world, wanting to get into the likes of retro gaming, old Internet sites etc as it takes me back to when I had all my family around, but it's also to do with how much I hate how, as I mentioned above, everyone is just controlled by their phone. We live in a world where the 'influencers' are stupid people, where idiots and nasty people get the most attention, where no one really talks anymore. 

 

Pre Internet meant we all had our own little bubble world too. We weren't bombarded by current news, and instead just focused on our little bubble of a town/city. 

 

On 1/5/2023 at 4:38 AM, Vanzant said:

You can literally do those things you want to do. Buy or find a free CRT TV. Hook up your old gaming station to it. Leave your cell phone in another room...There's so many ways to do this. You could dedicate a room to just old stuff like boomers do. Nothing is stopping you.

 

I'm officially a boomer! For ages now I've been wanting my own man cave with all my old gaming systems, posters up on the wall, a library of DVDs and CDs/Vinyls etc. 

 

Nothing is stopping anyone from doing this, I agree, but it's very hard in the modern age to not have to have the latest technology to just do simple things. I can no longer just go to my local town or city and buy everything I need because all of the high streets are disappearing from sight. Shops are closing, banks are closing etc. 

 

On 1/6/2023 at 7:08 AM, Frabbi 01 said:

I miss it too. Mostly being a kid of course. All the old videogames, and there weren't tens of thousands of them. No stupid achievements making you play to completion. Instead we played because we wanted to. Searching for the secrets that we thought might be there, but had no way of truly looking into them. Maybe if we were lucky, there would be one or two guides out there. Maybe they would be incomplete... and then your dialup connection would drop and it would take an hour to reconnect!

 

Everyone saw the same movies, the same shows, listened to mostly the same music. We all knew all the references. You can make a reference to something from the 80s or 90s today and everyone will still get it. There was less to do in general, so everyone had more in common.

 

Everyone had the NES. Then you either had SNES or Genesis. We played the same games. Now, at least as an adult, getting though just a few games a year is tough. And they're massive. I would much rather have today's games of course, but this is about missing the old days.

 

Going outside! We actually went outside! Friends were around, and sometimes finding them was a challenge. Were they home? Outside somewhere? Already hanging out elsewhere? Who was around? Playing manhunt (not the videogame LOL) for hours. Maybe going to the pool (and leaving when parents started bringing their defecating toddlers in). Playing tennis, kickball, or just hanging out doing absolutely nothing. Waiting for the ice cream truck. Maybe we would bust out the Super Soakers and water ballons and have a war.

 

Not time period specific, but family too. As a kid you get dragged all over. Then slowly you no longer see your relatives, and within a couple decades half of them are dead, but anyway...

 

Met quite a few younger people that say they wish they were a 90s kid. And I tell them it was awesome as everyone says it was. Having one foot in the pre digital age and having the technology grow up with you is amazing.

 

Want to go back, but I wouldn't want to stay. We're too close to superhuman AI and life extension. I do think though, maybe in the future an AI powerful enough can embed itself in my mind and recreate everything stored inside as a simulation, and I can enter or exit this Matrix-like universe at will. Maybe I can see everyone I knew once again...

 

As I said above, it's one of the things I miss about the old days of gaming. Some kid would come into school and tell you about a secret in a video game, and you'd believe it to no end, because you had no way of debunking it as easily as these days. You'd also get some excitement from when you find a secret in a game too (The 3d era of GTA games jump to mind). You'd have a desk drawer that contained pages upon pages of cheats, guides etc downloaded from the Internet. 

 

And yeah, the lack of Internet etc meant that trips to see your family were great because you didn't have the option of just messaging them all day every day. As ironic as it sounds, but I felt like the family unit was closer and stronger when we weren't able to just message them constantly, or maybe that's just me? I've pretty much lost all my family these days, so yeah, I pine for the old days when I had my family at home, and then trips to see the extended family. 

 

Maybe this is just a sign of not being down with the youth, but I feel like kids are missing out on so much joy from the world. They meet up with friends and have their heads in their phones, go home and continue to message these friends on the multiple apps. Social media has made us unsociable. I know it's somewhat of a meme these days, but I loved the days of going out in my village and having to think of the locations where my group of mates would be at, then meeting up and just spending all day chatting about music, games etc, all whilst getting up to the most fun sh*t we could think of. 

 

On 1/7/2023 at 12:50 AM, Adam Jensen said:

A lot of people feel the same. What they truly miss is being young again, being children and having no worries other than schoolwork. It's normal. But it doesn't mean that it's worse now than it was back then. You're just older and you have more responsibilities and less time for yourself. And all those things that were once new and exciting are now ordinary and they just don't have that spark, that magic that they had when you were a kid.

 

I agree and disagree. I disagree due to what I've pretty much already said. Even technology these days seems to have stalled somewhat. Phones all look the same and pretty much do the same thing, just with minor differences such as the camera or whatnot. We had the massive technological leaps in terms of gaming too, from the PS1 to the PS2 etc. Everything is trying to encapsulate and be everything these days, so everything just seems to be the same. All the social media apps are pretty much the same, all copying each other, losing all identity because they want to momopolise and be the only site you use. Even daft little things like the latest X video update that means anytime you play a video, it skips to another video (always seem to be an ad), just like YouTube Shorts, Tik Tok, Snapchat etc. The world seems to have become run by like 5 major corps. 

 

On 1/7/2023 at 4:09 AM, Straypuft said:

I miss life before social media.

 

Kind of, yes. Social Media isn't the issue, but as I said it's the fact they've all lost their identity and what made you want to be a part of them. They just want to control you these days. 

 

On 1/12/2023 at 1:41 PM, Cloudee said:

Sounds crazy, cause I wasn't even born before the technical age, but I regularly disconnect on weekends, just turn everything off, these days I do housework etc cause that's life, but I still enjoy sitting outside and listening to the world around me.

 

I get a sense of calm when I'm just alone with the world and the wilderness.

 

 

I recently went on holiday, and for some reason I couldn't access my phone network, so had no Internet all that week. I'll tell you what, I was so glad for it too. I actually spent a week completely disconnected from everything outside my bubble, and genuinely didn't miss been bombarded by stuff I didn't care about. The best thing for your mental health these days is to take a break from your phone, and just be in the current world, your current surroundings etc. 

 

 

I know this was a big bump but randomly came across this topic and this subject has always got me debating. Sorry.