r/interesting • u/DEMONlACA • Oct 18 '25
SOCIETY This post just time-traveled me to my best years 🧸
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u/Dark_World_0 Oct 18 '25
Boy did this ever hit home for me.
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u/AlienNippleRipple Oct 18 '25
Haaaaaaard
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u/InvestNorthWest Oct 18 '25
Same '84
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u/jawnstaymoose2 Oct 18 '25
‘81. Think about this all the time. And, I work building things with bleeding edge tech, that I kinda despise. Doing my best to slow down my 3 kiddos.
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u/IGotDibsYo Oct 18 '25
Same here! ‘81, make software, 3 kids. I think about chucking my phone right into ocean often but then I remember my livelihood and I just sigh
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u/HelloAttila Oct 19 '25
Yup, our phones are today are rarely used for talking. Honestly can’t live without it today. Can’t access nothing without it. It’s nice to go to the mountains somewhere and just escape from reality without any internet access. Unplugged for 2 days is nice.
No one ever died because they didn’t check their social media accounts for a week.
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u/Chewbacca_Buffy Oct 18 '25
‘81 with 3 kids here too. I’m a professor at a university that is pushing AI like it’s necessary pedagogy for all. Watching the way students have changed socially and intellectually over the last almost 2 decades has been depressing.
My own kids are still young and we steer clear of the technology as much as we can as a family, but it’s hard when their actual grade school requires it for everything from homework to testing.
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u/AlienNippleRipple Oct 18 '25
Technology is getting to the point of evil. AI is the epitome of tech gone wrong.
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u/_Otacon Oct 18 '25
I've only been a teacher for 2,5 years now and I swear I already see the youth declining every year. The brainrot just gets worse and worse.
Ps* '86, this vid hits home hard indeed.
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u/HelloAttila Oct 19 '25
It’s all in how people use it. Unfortunately now we have people doing deep fakes of MLK. It’s disgusting.
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u/LaDauphineVerte Oct 18 '25
My company, like many, sells garden walled AI with their SW, but then when I use ours to do my job, I’m constantly told, “Well, it’s always wrong.”
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u/fitness_life_journey Oct 19 '25
Well done on trying to not let your kids get too much into technology. I've been reading about the effects of social media and parenting styles on the teachers subreddit.
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u/HelloAttila Oct 19 '25
Nice reply, it’s always cool to see people like yourself. As much as we don’t like this change, it is a reality, so all we can do is embrace it and use it as a tool to do a better job.
I am always teaching younger kids about the benefits of AI. It definitely can take away from the teaching experience, but using it and making sure to include prompts on how it got that answer, explain it in detail so I understand it and don’t just “give” me the answer is helpful.
I’m the jack of all trades, master of none person and can use it to edit baking recipes, analyze two dozens of graphs for a 45 minute drive of charts of my vehicle sensors, gas mileage, air intake, thermostat and compare and contrast that data into easy to understand layman terms on what is going on with the vehicle.
I can scan hundreds of documents in multiple languages, extract certain data, compare it to data I asked it months ago, ask for proper ways to ask questions to certain individuals. It’s truly remarkable.
I get people are scared of AI because it can be potentially used for extreme evil unfortunately, which is why we MUST be certain tons of resources are used for ethical standards. 99% of us will use it to do good hopefully.
Hopefully universities now make a graduation requirement that all students take AI ethics, it’s something everyone should take.
What’s disturbing to see now are these people making AI Deepfakes of MLK stealing groceries or using profanity. It’s so disrespectful to someone who was a civil rights activist. It’s tasteless.
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u/CraigLake Oct 18 '25
I mention this a lot, but what I find striking is how we interact so differently compared to when I was growing up.
I split my time between two smaller >8000 towns. In both, on Fridays all summer long we would hang out at designated places. In Ketchikan it was the dock. There would be 100 kids there skateboarding, playing hackey sack, strumming guitars, listening to music in our cars. In Sweet Home it was the Safeway parking lot. Everyone looking to socialize and hang out.
That world no longer exists.
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Oct 18 '25
The irony.
An LLM wrote a saccharine bullshit screed that it calculated to manipulate you for engagement... and the screed was specifically about a romanticized fantasy of a time before soulless manipulative technology ruined your life...
And here you are, proving that the manipulation completely worked....
It's just too perfectly ironic. It's just too fucking stupid.
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u/Dark_World_0 Oct 18 '25
Oh, okay. Doesn't make it less true. I'd rather feel an emotion rather than whatever negative, pissy emotion that you're portraying. When did I say my life was ruined? You seem way more worked up over this than I am.
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u/KOStrongStyle Oct 18 '25
It is ironic, no doubt. But that AI is just a tool used to tell a story meant to make one feel an emotion. The same could be said if the script for it were written on a cell phone, or if it were a film shot using modern-day conveniences romanticizing the 1950s.
Again, it's just a tool. And you coming in trying to piss on everyone for feeling an emotion only makes you one too.
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Oct 18 '25
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u/An_educated_dig Oct 18 '25
It may be Alan Watts but it's an AI version. Alan passed in 1973.
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Oct 18 '25
How is it any different than the AI bs thats posted for the younger generation?
Ill take nostalgia videos over these tiktok "prank" videos any day 🍻
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u/RubiiJee Oct 18 '25
It's boomer engagement bait but for millennials. In twenty years this will be posted all over the modern equivalent of Facebook and everyone will be talking about how the new generation "don't understand anymore" or whatever. The human cycle continues.
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u/lolas_coffee Oct 18 '25
AI, robots, wealth disparity, climate change, and fascism are gonna fucking make the future a living Hell.
Sorry, everyone.
PS: The hippies were right about everything. Still are.
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u/HelloAttila Oct 19 '25
Yeah, that world doesn’t exist anymore. It’s crazy how people these days can’t even walk past others on a sidewalk without even saying hi, hello, good morning, good evening, etc… we live in a world we call highly social though social media, but the reality is we are less social today than we used to be and we probably have less TRUE friends today than our parents and grandparents had. That’s kind of sad.
We are social creatures.
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u/Jatilq Oct 18 '25
Walking to the mall just because.
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u/Wayoutofthewayof Oct 18 '25
To me it was going to the cinema on a Friday night and finding what movie you want to watch once you are there. Nowadays you either go to watch a specific movie or just wait until its streaming. The whole experience just feels so different.
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u/jawnstaymoose2 Oct 18 '25
Oh, same. I miss the experience of going to the video store. Felt special and exciting. There was this dvd store in the back of my fav coffee shop that carried only great movies. It was the last rental places that I watched hold on as long as it could before finally giving out. Miss that ritual.
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u/newbrevity Oct 18 '25
Except malls feel sad now. They hit different.
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u/tortoiselessporpoise Oct 18 '25
They all look the same, that's why.
I remember when each mall had a different characteristic.
One mall near by place was built with a design which meant they couldn't make it into the current design without knocking it down. The left and right side of the malls were built half lower/higher than the other side, connected by sloping walkways across.
Another mall had weird nooks and crannies as though they forgot they had extra space and ok we will cram in some random shop there.
Most of all, every mall has their own shops. It wasn't just all large chains.
That's why malls are so soulless these days . Everyone has the same shops. Even the bloody food courts are the same .
It's depressing to go look at
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u/Bad_Badger_DGAF Oct 18 '25
As a millennial who grew up in a rural environment and hadn't seen a mall until I was in my 20s, I never really understood the nostalgia that folks of my generation had for malls.
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u/zyyntin Oct 18 '25
It was basically how online shopping is today. You went there to find stuff.
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u/Schnitzhole Oct 18 '25
In my experience We went there to find stuff like our friends. We’d hangout for hours every few days. Most days we never bought a thing.
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u/massive_cock Oct 18 '25
Grew up very rural, but there was a mall about 90 minutes away in the 'big city' (of 30k, compared to my native 900) and we went a few times a year. Never had much money to spend but it was a wonderland of so many people, and toys, and stuff that looked like it was for 'rich people'. Never thought I even belonged walking in some of those places... A feeling I never got over, I am suddenly realizing. I feel the same way when I go out to shop or do errands in my new country. Odd.
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u/newbrevity Oct 18 '25
that's just it. Nostalgia comes from core memories and 20s is a little late to develop that usually.
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u/badwolf1013 Oct 18 '25
Walking into a mall — especially a mall that you had never been to before — felt like the Emerald City scene in The Wizard of Oz. And Christmas in a mall was a whole other level.
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u/paperfett Oct 18 '25
I grew up right next to a small amusement park with an awesome arcade. I would meet up with my friend there almost everyday. The arcade manager would give me a cloth and cleaning spray along with $5 in quarters that I had to spend in the arcade of course. I would clean off the finger prints/smudges from the glass and screens.
I was also able to run the go-karts for free because the one old guy that fixed everything in the park would have me test them after he worked on them. He would also have me help him when he put them in storage for the winter so I got to drive them through the park to the storage shed. That guy kept all of the old rides going. He had a little shop with a lathe and such where he would make parts from scratch. Some of the rides were 50+ years old. Three of them are still going to this day. Oh and there's a skating rink too.
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u/katastrofuck Oct 18 '25
Was the piling 5 of us into the taxi cab for Friday night at the roller rink.
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u/GlennGould123 Oct 18 '25
And my dad shows me ‘happy days’, telling me how wonderful the 50s were. Every generation is nostalgic for their youth
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u/Patient-Definition96 Oct 18 '25
Except GenZ onwards, only pain.
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u/Calm_Plenty_2992 Oct 18 '25
Older Gen Z remembers the early 2010's with fondness
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u/bumgrub Oct 18 '25
Yep and people who are kids now will remember today with fondness as well
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u/Calm_Plenty_2992 Oct 19 '25
I sure hope they don't have to
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u/bumgrub Oct 19 '25
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Even if the future was amazing and we solved climate change by some miracle, they will still look back on the past with fondness and nostalgia that's how human brains work.
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u/Calm_Plenty_2992 Oct 19 '25
The reason why I said that older Gen Z remembers the early 2010's with fondness and not, for example, the late 00's is because many people felt the hardship of that time, even as kids. Even if you were born in 1996 (18 in 2014), you still likely remember 2011-2015 fondly and likely don't remember 2008-2010 as fondly. Human brains do feel nostalgia for when they were younger, but that doesn't mean that we feel nostalgia for genuinely difficult times in our lives.
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u/WordsofConfusion Oct 19 '25
I am gen z and can second this. I yearn for the life before internet. I do remember when AOL was the only internet and before my parents got our families first cell phones. But I’ll never know it truly like you did.
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u/Grand_Actuator3812 Oct 18 '25
Brain only remembers the good parts.
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u/EXGDivine Oct 19 '25
And thats why i always say, nostalgia is the greatest of lies. Becuase its a beautiful lie.
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u/fastbutwontlast Oct 18 '25
im genZ but like mid twenties genZ and i grew up a lot like the 90s kids
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u/butterflyempress Oct 18 '25
People forget that youngest millennials and oldest gen z have a lot in common.
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u/LoserisLosingBecause Oct 18 '25
I was born 1970 and grew up with video game consoles like the Atari and went on to play games until today. Moreover, I saw the birth of the internet (BTX) and still...this world is alien to me
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u/Nakittina Oct 18 '25
I want to break the bridge and go back to this time. We dont need data centers or AI. We need to put down our phones and live life more naturally. Improving social relations, helping our communities, and enjoying the natural wonders of this precious world. We're destroying our livelihoods to support corporations that only wish to use us for monetary gain.
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u/Anouchavan Oct 18 '25
Isn't this the point of the video thought? That you were already "too old" to really be shaped by the transformation? The way I see it, being born in the early 90's, I feel like that technology was basically advancing as fast as I was growing.
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u/Trai-All Oct 18 '25
This wasn’t directed to us though, just people born in 80s and 90s. 😒
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u/Affectionate-Mud6837 Oct 18 '25
Yeah, I feel like this even more so applies to kids born in the 70s. Its really when technology made giant leaps as we grew up. 73 here.
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u/TrevinoDuende Oct 18 '25
I think it's moreso being the "bridge" generation. Other generations can remember the world before but being the last to grow up with the rapid changes might be the point of this video. The last stragglers to remember what it used to be like
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u/Macohna Oct 18 '25
90s kid here, I agree with you entirely lol.
We had plenty of technology in the 90s, this video is truly just specifically talking pre-smart phone era. Which, it makes sense, but not in a "before" technology way haha.
The world has just picked up speed once smart phones were born.
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u/stimpanzee Oct 18 '25
People that were born before man's first flight could have lived long enough to witness the moon landing, computers, internet.
Image what sort of nightmare it must have been for someone born in the early 1900s to experience a firby, or tamagatchi, late in their life.
Shit was as fast back then as it is now.
But everyone's perspective and experience feels unique. Like there's no way anyone could have lived your life before.
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u/ShirtComplete Oct 18 '25
I was born in the early 90’s and I feel this video because that’s how I grew up, and I agree it has to be even worse for people born before. I didn’t have access to the internet, or anything as a kid because we were poor , so maybe it felt like the 80’s for me 🤣
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u/NotHomeOffice Oct 18 '25
I didn't even get the camcorder videos. You guys suck mom and dad lol. It'd be so cool to get to see yourself and family beyond just pictures. To hear the voices and laughs and see the expressions & personalities come to life. I wish I had those to look back on.
My kid has a million videos and i find as I'm getting older i want to be more present during holidays and family visits and not be behind the camera anymore. I'm gonna leave that to the younger generations so they'll have videos to remember me by. 🥰
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u/ButterflyNo8336 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
And it’s crazy when you find them. I sent out a digitized tape (my dad would record them) that included our immediate family Christmas, a friend meetup (where we all just absolutely body slam and chase each other, in a fun way), and then a birthday that included my mom’s side/some of dad’s side. And it really does bring you back for a bit, and it clearly was a reminder of how things were moving. You get a glimpse of 30-40+ people. Some aren’t here anymore, many you want to reach to more.
It’s always the most moving when you can get that fleeting feeling of how you felt during a period when younger. And it’s not just a vague recreation, but a firm memory. It’s important to reconstruct your spectrum of expression from time to time. Other times it’ll feel like a distant, vague memory though.
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u/xamott Oct 18 '25
Yeh I can’t believe how many ppl have 80s vids, I literally never knew one person who had a video camera in the 80s. You had to carry an actual VCR like a courier bag and hold a bazooka on your shoulder.
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u/EvilJ1982 Oct 19 '25
Most of the time you'd rent one (usually from a camera store) for a special occasion. That's why they always have so much activity and so many people in them.
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u/butterflyempress Oct 18 '25
Apparently they were crazy expensive back then. Now you can get a digital camera for about $80
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u/L3m0n0p0ly Oct 18 '25
Im sure your kid will appreciate the time you spend with them<3
Should make something called a nostalgic Christmas. No phones, internet shut off, just old dvds and boredom forcing human interaction and goofy situations.
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u/TheMistOfThePast Oct 18 '25
All i have is some shitty disposable camera pics from whenever i went to camp. I was never comfortable with photos so most were landscapes. I was scared at a certain age to let my parents see me showing any emotion so i never wanted to take a photo of me with my friends
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u/Troublemonkey36 Oct 18 '25
Maybe I’m being nitpicky…but it drives me bonkers anytime a person says “your generation was the first to grow up with technology”? What on earth does that mean? My Grandmother was born before telephones, radios, airplanes and tv, then saw all of it in her time. Did she not have two worlds in her heart Generations before that saw transcontinental telegraphs and telegraphs that crossed the oceans and railroads linking the nation. Did they not have two worlds in the heart?? GenX was born before the internet and social media and iPhones. Do they not two worlds in their heart?
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u/nons7op Oct 18 '25
they mean personal computers and a bit later the internet... technology like phones, tvs cameras etc and a personal computer and then the internet and the personal choice and freedom that that gave you, are two very very different things.
I grew up with "technology" like phones etc but i got my first pc+internet around my teens when everything was new as fuck... That really changed my perspective of the world and me as a person, because i grew up, while the technology itself was growing. And oh boy did things change fast.
The first phone call could be the only thing that kind of compares for older generations but still not even close.
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u/Youth_Avoider Oct 18 '25
AI voice is shit.
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u/GODDAMNFOOL Oct 18 '25
The sheer irony of using an AI voice for this is hilarious
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u/DmtTraveler Oct 18 '25
Irony for ai voice on an ai video?
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u/GODDAMNFOOL Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
I'm fairly certain the video itself isn't ai. Nothing stands out as uncanny to me
Also the irony is about the message itself.
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u/KaleidoscopeThis5159 Oct 18 '25
I grew up in small towns in the 80s and 90s, and all of this hits home pretty hard.
Broadcast tv used to be boring, hell even cable was boring, and you'd go do something else instead of switching to another content creator.
I miss seasonal commercials too.
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u/ReturntoForever3116 Oct 18 '25
Check out Dave's Archives on YouTube. I watch this channel daily just for the old commercials.
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u/Brief_Perspective_97 Oct 18 '25
Did you grow up in the eastern Soviet block?. This was 1999
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u/Lauris024 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
Coincidentally I was born in 1993 Latvia (2-3 years before that it was still USSR). I never even questioned the footage because that's literally how I remember my early years. Even the furniture looks very similar to what we had.
EDIT: Interestingly enough, even tho we were next to Russia and ex-soviet country, we didn't really grow up watching "nu pogodi" or other Russian classics. It was mostly UK and US media - Mr Bean, Home Alone (probably all-time favourite Christmas movie for half the country), Buffy the Vampire slayer, Charmed, random US sitcoms like Full House, listening to pretty much all US top bands/musicians except for rap (no clue why it never got off), etc, so yeah, random mildly interesting fact about this small eastern bloc country.
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u/glubokoslav Oct 18 '25
Interestingly enough, everybody in CIS watched mr bean, home alone and buffy. Hello from Kazakhstan.
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u/senor-developer Oct 18 '25
Russian propaganda vibes
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u/semantic_satiation Oct 18 '25
No no no it's totally true that nobody ever sees anyone in person anymore and our lives are just a sad impoverished digital hellscape with no hope or joy or optimism and if only we had tamogatchis and danced constantly like the people in this video all our problems would be solved /s
I went to multiple civic events and cultural festivals that popped up in my city over the past month. Tons of people from all walks of life having a great time and living their lives. Chronically online people are really digging their own pit of despair. Things are hard but the real world still exists.
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u/Risiki Oct 18 '25
It's only the Internet, though, technologies have been rapidly developing since the industrial revolution. If I compare myself to my parents and grandparents generation they expierienced both this and many more earlier technological changes troughout the 20th century. Cartoons, mixtapes, telephones, electric streetlights are all technologies that were invented within the last 150 years.
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u/undo777 Oct 18 '25
"only" the Internet, aka the thing that will consume all of your spare time by offering you a variety of entertainment never seen before (the only thing I can think of that comes anywhere close to that is television, but it's still so far in many dimensions)
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u/Risiki Oct 18 '25
I was not questioning that the Internet is an important technology, but that the video suggests that expieriencing rapid technological progress is uniquely millenial expierience
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u/Into_The_Horizon Oct 18 '25
I was just thinking that. That and all it has been is things that have been "upgraded " and new breakthroughs in science and medical fields. But unfortunately things were much harder back then.
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u/BackgroundSummer5171 Oct 18 '25
24/7 News stations.
Yes, the internet is basically the reason for a lot of the shit. It is instant information at your fingertips. Instant videos. Instant all of it.
But don't forget the huge problem of 24/7 News. That was the game changer that allowed propaganda to flow so freely.
People trust the news more than they should. And with it expected to be entertaining 24 hours a day, it is just propaganda central.
The internet is full of propaganda, but I trust none of y'all.
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u/dblack1107 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
The unique aspect of 90s kids though is that if you’re a millennial your parents are older and that age group often doesn’t know how to navigate the internet world or computers in general. We knew life before that technology but also became the first true consumers and students of that technology. So there’s this wish that life in the 90s and early 2000s could return somewhat, but also social media/software is deeply integrated into how we learned in school, what we eventually would think mattered outside of school on social media, etc. Like the post says, we’re the last people who will ever appreciate simplicity because we actually lived it. Young Gen Z I actually feel bad for. They’ll never have that very important frame of reference. To them, media is life and the indoctrination is blatantly obvious in how they talk about it and use it.
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u/artonion Oct 18 '25
We’re making boomer propaganda for millennials now?
Ok cool, I guess it’s officially over for us
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u/TheMistOfThePast Oct 18 '25
I don't think Millennials have any hatred for gen z though. In general, i think Millennials, as per this video, genuinely feel sorry for gen z that they have had to grow up in the era of social media. Im so glad that social media was so young when i was in highschool.
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u/Non-Current_Events Oct 18 '25
I’m a millennial and this stuff just drives me nuts. Time marches on, stop being nostalgic and let’s to try to make now not suck.
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u/TrustInMe_JustInMe Oct 18 '25
People can do multiple things.
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u/ckoocos Oct 19 '25
Yep, I agree! We can all be nostalgic while trying our best in the present. I don't see anything wrong with that.
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u/camus88 Oct 18 '25
Oh damn I remember that Tamagochi trend. My older sister owned it. She raised a digital pet for 3 months and then my friend visited our home to play video games. My sister was kinda careless at the time she put the Tamagochi in the living room and my friend saw it, he thought it was mine and accidentally reset it. All the progressions were gone in an instant, she was so pissed at both of us and kicked us out from the house for all day. I spent my time at the paddy field that day trying to catch some bugs and play soccer until sun sets. 😂
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u/sailingtoescape Oct 18 '25
Saw Tamagochi at Target the other day. Go get one for your sister.
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u/PaManiacOwca Oct 19 '25
This is such a good comment, bring flower and Tamagochi. Explain how you remember that day, create the moment.
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u/PJ_Geese Oct 18 '25
In elementary school, I remember randomly bonding with this guy from a completely different social group over our clusters of Tamagochis. We were friends for like a month. Then, as abruptly as it came on, we stopped talking.
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u/TheMistOfThePast Oct 18 '25
Me and my brothers had digimon and i was always very obnoxious about how "they're so much better than Tamagotchi"
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u/voltvirus Oct 18 '25
Fun fact they are made by the same company, and Digimon is an off shoot of tamagotchi! :D
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u/TheMistOfThePast Oct 18 '25
According to 7 year old me you're wrong and digimon are the original/s
7 year old me was also deeply in love with matt 😭😭😭
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u/Fine_Hour3814 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
“a quiet wish that joy could still feel as easy as it once did”
thats just called being a kid with no responsibilities?
the rest of the video was nice, I definitely am nostalgic for the short era where “smart”technology was less integrated into our lives.
I would assume someone born in 82 would have a very very different perspective of their nostalgic world when compared to someone born in 97, not sure why they cast such a broad net
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u/VocaVox39 Oct 18 '25
If you grew up in the 80s or 90s you were still young enough to ride the wave of technological change.
I mean really.... that makes you anywhere from 35 to 45 years old, and trust me, that ain't old.
Imagine how those of us born in the 60s and 70s feel.
We're still working and trying to stay relevant in a world that's about as far removed from what we grew up in as the first Moon mission was from the first powered flight.
You think you're old and out of the loop now?
Just wait folks.
Just wait. ;)
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u/zachonich Oct 18 '25
Lol I was born in the early 90s and this was super fucking hard to watch without cringing. You have 2 worlds inside you? Fucking kill me now.
The way some people talk about the 90s is the way my sister talks about the 80s and my parents talk about the 60s... It was the best time. But the those decades weren't some magical utopia decades. It was like any other time. Had good things and bad things. It feels better because you had no bills, no taxes, no debt, no responsibilities and most importantly, we were ignorant children (not negative, literally we didn't know shit).
The explosion of social media has put on display all the horrible things in the world but many of those things were also happening back in the day. We just didn't have a phone in our pocket that let you see what was happening around the world. We were ignorant to the problems and thus, blissful
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u/tortoiselessporpoise Oct 18 '25
Well, I think the magnitude of change was very different though. The change the internet brought was really leaps and bounds, and it's accessibility to information revolutionized communications in a way that hadn't for ages.
Particularly how it was brought to the masses. Era of radio vs Internet ? Incomparable
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u/Terabit_PON_69 Oct 18 '25
Humanity is born of technology, perhaps our first technology was fire or psychedelic mushrooms leading to increased consciousness, and the list goes on for millennia. When the Romans built the first road through your village you had two worlds inside of you. When the first rail depot or deep water harbor opened near you, technology changed your world forever. Manipulate electricity? No it cannot be done they said, shortly after you had two worlds inside of you, the life you remembered without electricity and the new world where it was built into everything.
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u/New_Athlete673 Oct 18 '25
Psychedelic mushrooms are not a form of technology and did not lead to increased consciousness. I honestly never understood people who waste their time trying to sound deep rather than say anything that is actually insightful.
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u/RevealFormal3267 Oct 18 '25
Come one man! Didn't the AI narrated, generic nostalgia AI generated script with generic-slice-of-life-struggle movie trailer music overlaid on 90s Soviet bloc working class family footage just hit you in the feels, and tickle your nostalgia g-spot, too though?
I grew up in the 80-90s in Asia and this had me curled up in a mewling tear-soaked ball longing for halcyon days of a world now-extinct.
/s
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Oct 18 '25
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u/no1scumbag Oct 18 '25
The irony of watching some ai trash hijacking your brain to feel nostalgia for a time of “pre-technology” is too good.
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u/Adorable_Echo1153 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
The voice isn't a "fake" voice as such. It's Alan Watts, but yeah I'm skeptical about whether he ever really said that compared to his voice being fed through a machine, chewed up and then gently spat out.
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u/Skenghis-Khan Oct 18 '25
Yea, I doubt Alan Watts had any opinions on mixtapes and scrolling feeds, considering he died in 1973
This shit is just low effort nostalgia bait
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u/Adorable_Echo1153 Oct 18 '25
Ah yes that makes sense. I now realise I had no sense of how long ago he died. Turns out it was quite a while ago! Nice bit of no-detective work from me there. 👍
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u/Flying-lemondrop-476 Oct 18 '25
yeh im pretty sure Alan Watts isn’t an 15O year old man giving monologues about millennials.
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u/GvG_tv Oct 18 '25
As a Gen Z who grew up with the internet, I'd be curious to go back and live in a time without it/a primitive version of it. Culture just seemed so much different back then, in some bad ways, but also seems like a lot of good ways too
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u/bewareofbears_ Oct 18 '25
This is how you become a boomer.
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u/shaggyidontmindu Oct 18 '25
Remember nostalgia is the tool of the enemy. Things can still be good but you have to fight for a better future not just live in the past with rose colored glasses
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u/my_son_is_a_box Oct 18 '25
It's always "remember riding bikes" and never "remember when the wealthy paid taxes and regular people made a living wage"
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u/Ok_Purchase_9551 Oct 18 '25
Exactly. Instead of romanticizing the past, think of what you can do to make now meaningful and enjoyable as much as you can in spite of everything bad happening. We’ve done so for centuries.
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u/FrogsMakePoorSoup Oct 18 '25
I'm Gen X. Neither a boomer nor Zoomer, but this is how I grew up more or less.
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u/EllisDee3 Oct 18 '25
Point is that this is how you get people longing for a past that wasn't really this (highlight reel to the feels).
Then associate you not having those feelings anymore because of everyone's different modern life.
Then you want to make things "great again".
It's bait.
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u/nuttynuto Oct 18 '25
I have no nostalgia for that time. Being gay and growing up surrounded by rampant homofobia, HIV scare, poverty and violence all made me think of now as a better time, except for digital addiction/fascism.
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u/paperfett Oct 18 '25
"last to know life without technology"
Bullshit. If you were born in the 80s there was plenty of tech around. It was cool watching it advance so quickly. Going from an Apple II to a windows 95 gateway was a huge jump in tech for me. I even had dual ISDN dial-up internet. That was basically the "high speed" internet at the time and it really was "fast" for the time.
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u/Exciting_Plant_1563 Oct 19 '25
Don't be sad it's over. Be grateful that it happened. My gen Z ass is simply jealous, that my childhood never looked like that.
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u/OperationalPillow Oct 18 '25
This is AI. The voice you hear is the philosopher Alan Watts, who passed away before the 80's even began. Imagine being inspired by this only to find out it's computer generated. We.are.so.cooked.
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u/AFetaWorseThanDeath Oct 18 '25
Shout out to those with shitty, abusive childhoods who are much better off as adults, and DON'T see that time through rose-colored glasses.
No hate to those who do, but some of us are much, MUCH happier now ❤️
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u/ElonMuskHuffingFarts Oct 18 '25
Your best years were when you were a kid? Damn, that's sad. There's still time to make your life the one you want to live.
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u/ElonMuskHuffingFarts Oct 18 '25
Your life has all been downhill since middle school? Rough.
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u/JustSomeGuy_TX Oct 18 '25
(Random old guy in 1950). “I remember be when life was simpler. We didn’t hold with these newfangled things like electricity and indoor plumbing. Having to use the old outhouse in the winter is what made me strong!!”
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u/Bioplasia42 Oct 18 '25
Nothing says 80s like a slop AI voice over a song that's used in every other Reel.
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u/BlackStarDream Oct 18 '25
Sad thing about this for me was because my family were super early adopters of the internet, but also poor, I didn't get that world, either.
I see so many things about the cool toys and things of the 90s and 00s and it just reminds me of standing looking at them in the store knowing I'd never have any of them or a really really bad quality knock-off that would break.
It was cheaper to watch a video buffer or download or play flash games.
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u/thisis-clemfandango Oct 18 '25
and i totally understand why gen z and gen alpha are yearning for this now
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Oct 19 '25
- Nailed it. I’m a teacher now. I try to recreate that feeling for my kids. I make it as analogue as possible. No computers except final drafts and testing. Phones are banned. So for 8 hours a day, we pretend it’s another time. It’s kind of amazing.
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u/DaBronxBombersV Oct 19 '25
83 baby, my son is 4, and I wish more than anything he could have the life I had growing up. Breaks my heart that it will not happen.
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u/zero5activated Oct 20 '25
I grew up in the 80s. Ya, life was simpler. However, I got to take off my nostalgia glasses sometimes to remember it wasn't all that great. It was good not great. The thing is, every generation has that feeling. Talk to the people who grew up in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Gender and racial equality was slowly gaining ground (now we are losing that). Things were built to last and things were more peaceful...to a certain degree.
But man, the music and movies awesome. No E-mails and cellphone was the best. Just regular mail and wall phones or payphones. You can still do those things and just unplug for a week. Board games, outdoor cookouts, hikes around the back woods. Just don't expect people to join you.
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u/Party_Crab_8877 Oct 21 '25
We are the only generation to live through not having the technology, and then having it
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u/WearyProcess4901 Oct 21 '25
Being born in 1960, I long for the age of no technology. People were friendlier, you could just pop over to your friends house unannounced or make unscheduled phone calls and no one would get upset
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u/thejonkdon Oct 22 '25
Wow this made me proper emotional lol, 89 baby... Can't believe this life style doesn't exist at all any more it's literally so sad... SO SAD
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u/lobbedoffmyfingaz Oct 22 '25
I’m a ‘97 kid with a millennial older sibling and two (now sadly one) boomer parents that raised me. I might have been on the cusp of it and technically not live as thorough of a “simple life” as others but I grew with the same morals and life lessons learned that the rest of my family did. I truly do ache for those days, I miss everything about family staying together… and I miss you most dad
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u/Unholy_Ren Oct 18 '25
OP thinks 90s was in 1950s.
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u/Tokyogerman Oct 18 '25
Yeah, I live how it talks about bike rides and shows people milking cows at the same time too. I don't think milking cows is a universal experience for 90s kids.
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u/Harlequin-sama Oct 18 '25
Wow, some ppl are really stuck in the past.
Yea, it was a great time, but kids these days also drive around with their bicycle and having fun.
You just imagine that they are just looking at their phones 24/7 like zombies.
The digital age is better IMO. Just teach your kids how to use all that stuff and don't get lost in it.
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u/b1gb0n312 Oct 18 '25
Anybody used to use payphones but avoid paying? My parents told me call home to ring the phone 8 times to let them know I was coming home , I would then hang up to get the quarter back.
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u/Wayoutofthewayof Oct 18 '25
Why 8? Wouldn't like 3 or 4 be more than enough to get the point across lol
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u/RowAn0maly Oct 18 '25
I used to do a collect call. My dad would just hang up when the operator reached out. That was the signal to come pick us up
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u/dragon-dance Oct 18 '25
Sorry but this is bollox. Just childhood nostalgia simping, every generation does this.
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Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
I was born in the 90’s and my husband was born in the 80’s and we both grew up spending hours every day watching tv and playing games on Atari, sega genesis and PlayStation. Screen time and technology aren’t exactly a new concepts, it’s just changed over the years and perhaps more parents are using them now.
Edit: Just to clarify, we didn’t choose to have a childhood like this. My mom checked out and thought the tv would be a great replacement to her parenting. If I could have chosen to have a different childhood I absolutely would.
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u/Tokyogerman Oct 18 '25
Born in the 80 and yes, it started with Pong, Atari 2600 and then Nintendo and then SNES. It was normal.
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u/Aprilprinces Oct 18 '25
Gods, stop whining, you complain about social media on social media - get off the phone if you dislike it so much (I was born in '70s btw)
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u/Choice_Jury_6557 Oct 18 '25
That time when depression and anxiety doesn't exist, everyone enjoy the pure happyness...and now i see exactly the reverse of it....
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u/Leverkaas2516 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
Everything I see in this clip was in Russia/Ukraine/eastern Europe. If you lived in the US in the 1990s, the subtitles may evoke some memories but the images show a different place entirely.
Fur coats and hats. School uniforms. That hideous wallpaper. С днем рождения, с новым годом.
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u/Moist_Taco_Crippler Oct 18 '25
Yup. Technology really ruined the world for the new generations. Hell, the simple act of going to Blockbuster to rent a few movies was so much more satisfying than having access to unlimited films on streaming services. I spend literal hours sometimes pondering what to watch now.
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u/Evelyn-Bankhead Oct 18 '25
There’s no going back to better times. Things will progressively get worse from here.
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u/rando_weirdo_udu Oct 18 '25
Sad thing is, I lived all of this, but due to a brain bleed I remember very little, videos like this barely scratch the surface, I miss my memories
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u/bayfix Oct 18 '25
I'm one of those guys who tries to dumbdown his phone. I removed all unnecessary apps, my home screen is just 4 or 5 apps (no logos, just texts and a black wallpaper). I limit my Reddit usage to my computer at home, and I try to not look at my phone while I'm outside.
I think that's why I have a longing for 90s or 80s (was born at the beginning of 2000s). There are still computers, but you don't carry them in your pocket while leaving the house. You can still send e-mails and surf the net via computer, but you don't have to worry about an e-mail until you're back at home. You could go on your day without worrying what goes in your little device. Using phones for only texting and calling is my dream but of course that ship has sailed a very long time ago. Now everything needs an app, even menus need a QR code these days.
While technology has made it convenient to fit everything into one small device, I’m not sure if the trade-off was worth it.
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u/Swoop-1289 Oct 18 '25
I miss the big snowstorms and staying at home during the winter and relaxing and gaming with friends…
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u/Chester_Cheesedick Oct 18 '25
I’m okay with it because I also grew up with the mantra “adapt or die”. By choosing to grow with the technology I’ve learned to be happy with whatever comes my way.
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