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Imagine for a moment that it’s 1975 and you’re a twenty-something looking to toss back a few beers with friends. You can’t shoot out a few text messages and choose the most appealing option from a variety of friends.
You can’t e-mail your best buds like I do on Friday afternoon and see what kind of shenanigans they’re getting into tonight and you certainly can’t rip off a couple of Snapchats from your desk with a caption that reads “let’s get fucking ripped tonight.”
No, no. The only real option is to call your friend on their home phone. You make a plan to meet at some bar at 8:30 p.m. and they would show up. That was it. There was no bailing last second or a text message asking if you’d like to change plans and go to a bar uptown rather than downtown.
There were no “on my way now” text messages. No Instagram pictures that needed to get taken. You simply showed up at the place you were supposed to show up to and drank beer with your friend. If you wanted to make a move to another bar it happened organically and you weren’t texting another group of friends to see what bar they were at.
The uncertainty of a night out in in the 70s or 80s when no one was using a cell phone was what made the night so fun and crazy. I love hearing stories from my parents about nights out they had in college or visiting friends in a different city because they always seem so far-fetched and out of reach for me.
I have a lot of fun with my gadgets and gizmos in 2017. I definitely would not want to live in a world without my cell phone but just being alive and able to survive in this pre-cell phone era is a huge accomplishment.
If I’m away from my phone for more than an hour or so I legitimately get withdrawals. It’s a sad fact of life but it’s true as fuck.
You ever been lost on a back road somewhere and have to pull up Google Maps on your phone while driving? It’s really fucking annoying – and dangerous to boot.
Now just imagine that same scenario but instead of pulling up Google Maps you have to veer off onto the side of the road, get a map made out of paper from the glove compartment, and then use your wits to figure out where you are on said map and how to get to your destination. Fuuuuuuck that.
Last weekend, I used Google Maps to walk from an apartment in the East Village to another apartment near Gramercy Park. Do you know what I would have had to do if I didn’t have a cell phone to figure that out? I would have been forced to stop a stranger on the street or a worker in a shop and ask for directions. The horror!
The wildest thing to me about the pre-cell phone era is not the use of navigation apps, though. It’s that people stuck to their word. Humans have always been flaky, sure, but I think before cell phones existed people, in general, were just more reliable.
Nowadays if you want to meet someone for a drink there’s like a 50/50 chance that you’re going to show up to the rendezvous point and get a text message as you’re ordering your first beer that says, “Hey, something came up I’m not gonna be able to make it. My bad, man.” And that’s not a big deal in this day and age because you can just text another person and see if they want to link up.
If this was 1975 though? Your friend who said they were showing up at 8:30 p.m. to a bar doesn’t show you had to just assume they got kidnapped or were murdered right? People were more dependable back then. More authentic. It’s not that I would want to live in that generation and this is not an indictment on our current one. It’d just be nice if we were all a little less flaky. That’s all. .
Image via Mental Floss
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jduda@grandex.co
The best part of the 70s and 80s was that when you went to the bar, the Chainsmokers weren’t playing on the jukebox.
As a kid who grew up in the 90s, there was nothing that gave me more anxiety than having to speak to your friends parents for all of 15 seconds before your friend got on the line to set up a hangout.
Ah yes. Also the risk of telling your friend that Nicole told you about something called a “hand job” without one of your parents picking up the phone and listening in. What a rush.
16 minutes later, I’m still chucking at this.
Having nostalgia for a time period you never actually lived in is odd.
That and drunk calling 2 of your exes was a lot more difficult when you had to get the damn coins into the payphone after nine 7&7s.
Polaroid Nudes.
Wildcard aspects make everything seem 10x more fun
Big fan of just letting my phone die after I get to the bars to allow room for spontaneity and to discourage me from just Irish exiting since usually I then have to rely on somebody else to call an uber. It also ensures every one of my friends hates me.
Took my phone swimming during my bachelor party on saturday. I can say, with 100% certainty, that the uncertainty of not having a phone fucking blows. Also, if you wanna talk about Scaries, just think about getting a renewed wave of them every time you reach for your phone, and then remember you’re a damned idiot man-child.
Shouldn’t have had your cell phone with you at a bachelor party dude.
Now on the other side, imagine having to try to make plans with a group of only 5 people, calling around and finding a time that works for everyone, then calling everyone back and giving them a time and location. As someone who has to do this with their family once a week, its a 30 minute hassle.
No ease of being able to call an uber home, you’re at the mercy of your cab driver knowing where your street is, or at least the general area. Photos still happened too, people brought cameras, people scrap-booked. People still bailed last second, they just called the bar and the bartender had to yell out that the phone was for you, if your friend was willing to call.
Stop living in the past like the 70s and 80s were the greatest time to be alive, the 2010s are better.
I still use the Motorola Razor. The only certainty is that flip phones are made for closing.
If you were a true closer you’d know it is Razr.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a razr on my desk right now