Ask Lemmy

I was an 80’s kid, and we had the best Saturday morning cartoons.
Transformers, GI Joe, Scooby Doo, Thundar the Barbarian, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Superfriends, Hurculoids, etc.

Working in a bar

I love people. I'm a people-person, but I kno know that I am remembering it through rose-tinted lenses

Most customers were average, a few were great, a fair number were dicks

But the hours, the late nights, the cost to my own social life, the lousy pay, the inability to eat normal meals at normal times, all of that shit takes a toll

But I still have some fond memories and occasionally think about opening a bar with my woman

Oh, and I was running a place with a long-term partner. Doing that shit was the final nail in the coffin of our relationship, so fuck that...

Windows XP.

A security nightmare, had more unfinished backends than a plexiglass gloryhole.... But goddamn could that machine run

The smell of leaded gasoline.
The smell of a fine cigar: I quit smoking 14 years ago but I miss that.

And I'm 200% sure they were awful.

Going out with friends between 1991 and 1997. It was a great time looking back, but most night probably were just a lot of (underage) drinking and not much else.

Candy cigarettes.

Bad tasting sugar. Trains you for holding a real one.

But they were at the gas station a mile from home and near a park. Freedom from family and responsibilities. Just spending time with friends, eating candy, enjoying the sun shine. Dreaming of smoking.

The wait before things worked.

Yes, it's better to get what you want no delay. But the pace of life, the rhythm, has changed. I'm old, it's true, but I'm still gonna throw it out there.

Yes, it's 90% better now. But I miss waiting.

Let's make it 100%. Dial up noise, window XP startup and shutdown tune

Come to think of it, I miss school and I miss the military. They were both godawful, but I was young.

I miss my first two cars. The first was a 1989 Dodge Daytona which was probably the worst car ever made and it only lasted 6 months before the head gasket blew. The second was a 1995 Ford Escort LX sedan. This was the car that I taught myself how to drive manual transmission on. It was more reliable than the Daytona, but it still had a ton of quirks like shorts in the wiring harness in the steering column --so much so that I learned which pins to short out to hot wire it lol. I miss both of those cars because of the sense of freedom they provided to get away from an emotionally abusive home life.

Being absolutely sure about everything.

Little Caesar's as a traditional pizza parlor.

My ex.

Only knowing small TVs. Step by step, displays have inarguably improved massively, and I do love my giant OLED flatscreen. But watching TV was still great fun in the before times, people still watched the hell out of it, so can we say it brings people more joy now? Or is it just technically and visually better?

I think if you're the kinda person watching beautiful premium shows, that's an experience you couldn't really get before. But I like TV that I can have on in the background, while I'm doing the dishes, and now we're expected to pay attention to details on screen. Back when half the audience had tiny, grainy or monochrome displays, shows were written to suit listening as much as watching. And it's not just scripts, shoddy visuals allowed costumes, sets and design that was evocative but cheap, in a way that cannot pass muster today.

And by comparison, it's reduced the justification for going to cinema, and even kinda made the real world look bad. It used to be worth going somewhere in person because it would look infinitely better than seeing it on a screen. But now, it can actually be a disappointment, as the carefully composed filmed version with post production actually looks more impressive than irl. It's the Connoisseurs Paradox, has it really deepend my pleasure, or merely raised my standards so much that I'm actually less satisfied?