[cjfd]

I am not so sure. The world of printing out driving directions or emailing photos sounds a lot more calm. Also, simply quite enjoyable. The current world is cramming too many events in too little time, it seems. Stress is quite bad for health so I am not so sure about these hundreds of millions of lives saved. It may also have costed quite a few.

[whimsicalism]

nah, that was ass. i think the really major negative has just been scrollable video. all these other things - uber, airbnb, grocery pickup, etc. have largely just made my life better.

[hparadiz]

Can you imagine sitting around waiting for a phone call these days? At home? With a landline? Lol. Or going to the video store to drop $20 (with inflation today: $48) on three movies that you had to actually return by driving. The romantic waxing about hanging out with people is hilarious. More often than not it meant coming home at 10 pm and watching shitty network tv by yourself. Now I can play games with all my friends across the entire world.

[watwut]

I never done any of those things. And I was there, I was old enough. I was not desperately waiting for phone calls or paid a lot of money to borrow movies.

Somehow, I occupied myself just fine, was meeting friends regularly and did activities regularly. There was no societally wide lack of entertainment.

[hparadiz]

I think you are probably an outlier if you've never rented a movie in the 90s and shouldn't generally be used as a good example of how life was. It's frankly absurd that you would even bring it up as a virtue.

[watwut]

I did not brought it up as virtue. Virtue is entirely your framing. I just was not renting movies nor were my friends nor family. Meeting friends and occupying yourself was completely normal, any average person did it. In fact, healthy people will create fun and entertainment for themselves no matter the technological level of the society.

Frankly, it is super weird that you see doing fun stuff as some kind of virtue.

[cjfd]

By the way, I am old enough to remember that world. When I was young, people had fat books with maps of most large and medium size places in the country.

[peab]

nah, i distinctly remember family road trips as a kid. Driving was super stressful with my mom yelling about missing an exit as she reads the map, getting lost in a not so nice neighborhood, etc.

you're romanticizing the past

[fl4regun]

lol this still happens today

[fragmede]

No it doesn't. Not in a healthy relationship. Blink twice if you need help getting out of an abusive relationship.

[peab]

right - so imagine how much worse it would be with a paper map or printed instructions