It's okay--we old folks can benefit from having a few younguns around.

im 26, I was a kid with flip phones, I remember dropping my dads in the toilet, I was an early ipad kid basically, needed phone games lol, I rmemeber early iphones and the fake chinese ones with the picture puzzle game, kinda went through a lot of eras growing up, had an xperia play as my first phone in middle school (amazingly didnt regret it even tho any phone + psp wouldve been a far superior combo lol) Ipod touch 4 year or two before is when the appstore was poppingoff with angrybirds, doodle jump, etc.

I was probably older than you are now when you were born. It's been interesting (in the ancient curse sense of the word) to witness firsthand a world without internet slowly becoming online, advancing, then decaying into the corporate-run AI slop hellscape we're seeing today.

back in my day, there weren't smartphones

We of the fabled Oregon Trail Generation had the unique experience of an analog childhood and an adulthood in the digital hellscape we all know and love.

So when we wandered off into the woods for hours, or even once I could borrow a car and head over to a friends' place? Completely unreachable. The only exception was the house phone at a friend's place if we were there.

When I was in college, Wi-Fi was just becoming popular. The equivalent to walking down the sidewalk with your face in your phone was the couple grad student TAs who were busy or nerdy enough to walk between buildings holding their laptop open in front of them. Wi-Fi was not built in of course. It was a PCMCIA card sticking out of the side.

When we were home or in our dorms, we didn't sit on our phones, we sat on our PCs! And now decades later I've transitioned back to sitting on my PC at home and it's great, lol.

My first personal cell phone of any kind was my dad handing me down his old work phone when I finished college and moved a couple hours away. It was a Motorola Startac motherfucker! Look it up and be jealous!

It's funny because I'm only in my mid 40s and have very little gray hair. I don't feel like an old, but I have absolutely hit the point of the "back in my day" attitude. I usually don't actually say anything unless I see a good joke in it, because that would be cliched and obnoxious.

I bet there's something about being the age where you could be a grandparent. There's something pretty damn wholesome about watching people who are young enough to be your children having their own families and careers and stuff. We had our kid about a decade later than we wanted, so I think my son gets to benefit from me being half chill grandpa and not 100% frantic young parent.

I read a lot of “back in my day, there weren’t smartphones” comments whenever the post talks about technology and smartphones, and I feel so left out.

reminder that not everyone is a westerner. my home village only had internet (adsl) like in 2008 or so

Feel free to ask weird questions and rant about life! Our lives were very different 20 years ago, so it's interesting to learn from the perspectives of other generations.

Eh, don't sweat it. I'm 41, and I still find myself feeling the same way when my manager is talking.... and he's younger than me. I've been told you reach a point where you just don't care anymore but my supervisor is 52 with two grown children and says she still gets that feeling from time to time, so who knows how true it is.

Now for the "get off my lawn" portion of the reply. I can remember in 1991 my aunt was working for a legal firm and running documents around for them, they needed instant contact so they paid big bucks to have a mobile phone installed in her car. It cost a ridiculous amount per minute to talk on. One day she was talking me to McDonald's and I asked why she had a phone in her car since she couldn't plug it in, after she explained it to me I asked if I could call my dad, she said yes but make it quick. She dialed his number at work and handed me the phone. When he answered I blurted out "hi dad I'm calling from Aunt Juanita's car! Have to be quick, bye" and before she could stop me I hung up the phone.

She called him back to apologize and let him know everything was ok, then handed the phone to me so my dad could lecture me about phone etiquette and tell me to be good for Aunt Juanita.

Also I remember being excited to get to go to the school library to play Oregon trail on the green screen computer and having to swap out 5 inch floppy disks throughout the game to move to the next part.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to take some ibuprofen as all this typing is aggravating my joints. LoL.

We speak in metaphor and paradox instead of innuendo. For example: there is a before and after the internet and neither of these periods include the previous 30-40 years.