My family's first computer had 4 colors, 32k of ram, floppy disks that actually flopped, and a 1 mb hard drive. And a dot matrix printer that did like half a page per minute. I was able to chain smoke cigarettes all night at Perkins legally.
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Can I join now or do I have to wait until I actually hit 40
Open membership, any age is welcome but you do have to be over 40 to be in the Presidium of the club.
to actually remember the USSR you might want to make it the Over 50 club. i dont remember the USSR but i was around to see the world before the internet took over everything.
I remember the USSR - it was one of the real freebies in those early "place the countries on a globe" computer games
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Remember making a mix tape by pausing it on record and waiting for the radio station to play the song you wanted? Personalized mix tapes and even cds were totally rad.
Yes, I also enjoyed making my own radio shows by recording them on tape. Had I known about podcasts at that age, they would have blown my mind.
i'm joining.
I fit this demographic, but I also lived in a really rural area, so we were even further behind than most on a lot of stuff. Definitely got our video rentals from the grocery store, the same one that also had a tank with live lobsters in it that endlessly fascinated me and my siblings.
But the cars owned by my aunts and uncles had 8-track decks in them and my grandparent's house had an Atari 2600, where I put in a lot of time on stuff like Berzerk and Defender.
If my dad wasn't a huge dork, for a farmer anyway, that loved Star Trek, I probably would have never gotten a computer until was out of college or something. I can remember accessing the internet with a 14.4 kbps modem that I was only allowed to use for like an hour late at night since we only had one phone line in the house.
I will come and visit in a couple short years. But remember how bad blockbuster video was as opposed to every other small and big video rental place, grocery stores included? Edited movies, nothing unrated or NC-17 (unless edited down to R). This was a hindrance to many small distributors. I remember at a music festival Troma had a stand and they would give you a free DVD if you cut up your Blockbuster card. Blockbuster refused to carry Troma movies, of course
Reminds me, my local video store would make bootleg VHS copies but would sometimes reuse tapes and just print new stickers for them which I discovered when I kept All Dogs Go to Heaven playing after the credits and saw a lady getting splattered with cum. They got raided by the feds later when they tried doing it with CDs and DVDs. Miss that place.
I'm not quite all the way to 40, but I do remember a time before anyone in my family owned a computer. And when asking a child in school "Have you ever used the internet?" had two correct answers: "Yes." and "No.", whereas today there is only one correct answer, which is a very concerned sounding "Are you OK? Do you need me to call someone?". I dropped my first cell phone - which I got when I turned 14 - from a third floor window unto pavement. It was fine. Or, well, it couldn't save any text messages since I already had like 60 of them that I hadn't manually deleted, so the hard drive was full, but actually damaging it physically would have required a commitment to total war by a major industrial state.
Remember watching new episodes of signfeld? How does it make you feel to watch AI generated signfeld now? I remember when no one I knew had ever seen a computer
I remember that getting high paying short term jobs was kinda easy. If you luckily got in touch with someone the likelihood that they would contract stuff out to you was there, especially in terms of electronics, IT, or event organization.
I did fly around a bit and that was quite relaxed back then. The security was virtually non existence, the food was somehow nicer (except if you were vegan, vegetarian or had trouble with lactose or didn't eat pork for religious reasons). There was little on board entertainment though that would fit your interests, so talking with your random neighbours was more common (this was true for any location really).
When I was a kid we would re-purpose wire from construction sites to dig our own land lines between friends and used self constructed radios to stay in touch. Weekends at the scrap yard were quite common. During summer you would have some locations in parks, at the river or alike you would meet up and those were social meeting places, where you could expand your social circle or make out with persons during holidays you often wouldn't see again. A similar attitude I only found later on in live at cruising places (and some festivals with swinger/hippy vibes or left flat shares).
Is there like a membership fee?
Blockbuster isn't that old yet, I'm not even 30 and have memories of getting Sailor Moon and Pokemon VHS there. Heck by some definitions I'm even a Gen Z so I guess it's super early Zoomer memories lmao
I'll join but then I plan to start a splinter group. 
