Best 2 weeks of my life

Not 90s but the 2000s in the middle east (keep in mind the same technology was released here at a similar time but adoption was slower due to prices and companies at the time not knowing how to market their products in non-western markets)

I have older siblings and younger siblings and I want say me and my friends in the same age group exist in this weird transitional generation. We are too young to have embraced the optimism and hope of the older generations but we are too old to have just accepting the current status quo as how we found the world to be.

As a child I have used the entire progression of the telephone. I have used landline, dumb Nokia phones, blackberry, smart Nokia phones, and Samsung smart phones. I remember watching both satellite TV and YouTube Minecraft let’s play as a kid. My dad used to take family pictures using both a film camera and a digital camera. I remember when we had to go out I would schedule the VHS recorder (or whatever it’s called in English) to record my favourite cartoon tv show.

But what I believe is the most impactful aspect is the politics. I can clearly remember the Arab Spring (a series of revolutions in 2011). I was too young to understand it at the time but I sure have felt this feeling hope, optimism, and freedom in everyone around me just to realise when I grew up that we’ve lost.

Also LLMs and AI became a thing while I’m in the middle of university so I have seen how the concept of education slowly change from who learnt the skills better to who can make it the fastest with least tokens spent.

I’m also an introverted nerd so the moment I had internet access I was totally invested. I have seen how it turned from wholesome (and totally not wholesome) forums, chatrooms, and personal blogs, to these gated gardens, to brainrot and then AI slop. And I miss just hanging around uninvited in a small niche online community and talking to people.

I think what would resonate with my age group and some older folks is the feeling and promise that certain things and the future will be ours when we grow up, just to loose it all before we had the chance to.

No social media. All the stupid stuff I did and said as a kid stays where it belongs, haunting my memories as I lie awake at 3 AM.

Man, people are really treating this like this is Reddit again. Because that’s where I’d see this kind of crap show up in, is Reddit.

I was wearing an onion for a belt, as was the fashion at the time.

Better in a lot of ways

Imagine life with no internet, no cell phones, and personal computers were both very rare and very few people knew how to use them.

AAA games were actually good.

I’m guessing you mean the 20th century in general rather than 1900-1910? Because not many of us are going to be that old.

It was… wonderful and fucking awful in equal amounts. The details have changed between then and now, but the ratio is probably about the same.

Absolutely amazing life back then! My parents were DIRT poor. They were always having the talk with me that we may have to move in with relatives. The only reason we had a home I believe is due to my father’s childhood friends. At age 7, I was exploring forests and creeks miles from my home, built forts in the woods, walked to the mall with friends and took samples from the Pepperidge Farm store samples as my lunch or eating at friends homes. I drank from friends outdoor water hoses, no one carried water around. I was expected home when the street lights went on. My mother did not have me until she was 40 and was the first woman to own a car in her community, so her and her friends traveled often. She wanted the same for me, so at 11 allowed me to take a Greyhound alone to visit and stay with my friend’s family that had moved to the middle of New York state. We visited, lake placid, thousand islands and learned to sail on one of the finger lakes. (Later in my 30’s found out, just like riding a bike, I remembered how to sail while visiting Mission Beach in San Diego). Back then all travel direction was using folded up maps that took a scientist to figure out how to re-fold properly.

Moved out at 17 with a group of guys. Lived in a massive apartment in a Victorian townhouse mansion near the university. At 20, friends with rich parents were buying massive mansions for 200K together in a seriously run down neighborhoods. I got a job working for Kinko’s and moved up to manager for DTP. I bought a 25K 2bdrm condo in a very old building in historic neighborhood that was a mix of rich and dirt poor. At 27, Sold it for a nice profit and invested in a condo that was just was just a developer’s paper dream condo building at the time. Located in a lot in the city business district. I somehow got a job working in a datacenter, NO DEGREE, but loved computers. I lived through the time before desktop computers and cell phones, so there were no courses on how to do anything. I started on Word, PageMaker versions 1.0 with Netscape browser. Then my roommate got a job working on Apple’s first business office in the city and he brought home a Mac Plus. I often chuckle that the only difference between Eliza app and Chatgpt is speed and access to everyone else’s data. Actually, I do not remember Eliza ever lying.

I do miss companies coming out with all the cool electronic devices. I wish I still had my Sony pager like slider that worked as a phone on data only networks, no need for a monthly cell plan when accessed with public networks. Or my slim phone with face cover switch plates that fit in my pocket, back then, I had all my important numbers memorized even though it did have an electronic phone book. All my older friends had expensive stereo racks with knobs and equalizers that I had little understanding but I knew which sliders to move to make it loud. All stereos had huge wood speaker boxes to sound decent.

I was still living on noodles with tuna but was introduced to curry which made cheap meals amazing. Got a job working overnight in a datacenter for a hospital. When I eventually bought and moved into my second condo, it had views of the river, the video billboard inside of the stadium and views the tallest tower in the city. My living room had a glass garage door that opened to a wrap around balcony. My mortgage was $700 a month for a 2 bed, 2 bath place that looks like it belonged in New York. But honestly it was far better because I could walk to hundreds of bars and new restaurants. Biked trails along the river. Always concert events in the city and the people were far friendlier than the many times spent in larger cities. It was always satisfying to pull out my phone photos when some big city dude joking about me being from a fly-over-city. My friends in Indianapolis were watching the home of a couple that owned a downtown building and invited me to stay with them for the weekend. Lenny Kravitz was performing in Meridian Park for free. We had to-go cups of liquor, roller blades and had a blast drunk skating around the park. Police never bothered us even though our group was just about every ethnicity. Sadly, looking back now, it was likely we were not bothered since we were a mixed group and fairly well dressed with expensive skates.

Now that I am an old GenX man I do have some advice, it’s not where you live, but how you live. Question everything. Listen to advice from trusted sources, but only take that advice after thorough research on how it applies to YOU. Beware, most advice is almost always FOR the person or companies giving it. My best decisions were going against the advice of friends and today going against the advice of companies. Their advice helped me define and verify my thoughts. My friends understandably do not want me to take risks, and neither do I. But big dreams and taking calculated risks were definitely easier when younger and in places that are not as popular. Make it work for you with what you have. Easier said than done these days. Beware of short term gains for long term loss, it’s been a game that too many Americans fall for and ONLY things that seemed to be offered today. Happiness is not what you have, but how you live and the friends you make.

I now live in Hawaii. Monetarily it’s expensive to feed myself and my pets. Will likely have to go back to getting roommates or sizing down. Shanty houses go for 1 million and condos start at 500k for 1 bedroom. The weather is worth it because being outside is free.

Before video games and cable TV, I read a lot of books. I can remember reading Call of the Wild and White Fang in elementary school, “childrens” classics like Tom Sawyer, Robinson Crusoe, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 20000 Leagues. Encyclopaedia Brown was a favourite childrens series of mine.

Perhaps it’s just nostalgic romanticization, but I seem to recall that product quality used to be far more important: Manufacturers vied for customers’ favor and therefore focused on offering the best value for money or innovative products to outdo the competition.

This seems to me to have been lost to a large extent due to the fact that unbridled capitalism—likely exacerbated by the Internet’s tendency toward centralization—has led to increased monopolization, so that providers have now shifted to exploit their customers to the maximum, since they no longer have the option of switching to any provider other than perhaps two or three gigantic corporations that dominate their respective business sectors unchallenged.

This seems to me to be a development that was certainly already in the making in the 1990s and early 2000s, but which has intensified—largely due to the internet’s trend toward globally centralized platforms—to such an extent that now even fewer, even more unscrupulous billionaires can abuse their unrestricted market power not just nationally or at least to some extent locally, but internationally.

It seems to me that this development has to do with the fact that the internet represents a global market, but there are simply no global authorities that could counteract the formation of monopolies on an international level.

It seems to me to be the logical consequence of the predominantly U.S.-led cutthroat capitalism that has essentially lost its social function of distributing goods in favor of becoming an instrument of power for the multi-billionaires who have become far too powerful. The result, it seems to me, is a kind of new monarchy of billionaires who have become so powerful that they have been able to place themselves above the community and the law—with fatal consequences for the general public.

Of course, these immensely influential private individuals with their boundless greed already existed in the 1990s, but in my opinion, their influence wasn’t quite as far-reaching back then.

Back then it was boring, but the trade off was you could be someone without being the best in the world. What used to be “let me tell you about my friend” became “let me show you this internet video.” You didn’t have to be the top player in the world to be the top player at the arcade. You didn’t have to be a prodigy to have people think your art was cool. The internet moved the goal posts out of reach and we were all suddenly nobody, consumers, wannabe influencers at best. The technology thought to allow everyone to find an audience put us in our place and we’re all nobody now. You get zero views, zero interest, the famous get a billion.

Something I’d like to mention, money was still mostly cash. I remember when credit cards became a thing. Getting credit and loans was rare. If you didn’t have the cash, you didn’t get it.

You could actually feel and count what you spent and realize how many hours of work it took to make. Now it’s just a fuzzy digital idea of how much youve earned and how much you owe.

Interestingly though… There was still the concept of “bad money, blood money, or filthy lucre.” If you thought someone was buying something with money they’d gotten from drugs, or whoring women or hurting people, you had the option of not taking it. Black balling that person and not dealing with them.

Now it’s so digital, and there is no concept of dirty money. The goal is get it anywhere and everywhere at all costs, and that’s wrong. The morality has gone out of trade and economics. And as crazy as that sounds, yes, there used to be morality in economics.

Certainly more than there is since the start of the new millennium.

Things were getting better and people still had some hope.