Analog Nostalgia, Digital Frustration
Gen X, Xennials, and elder Millennials are fed up with tech ruling their lives and have initiated a revolt
Halfway through my senior year in college, Facebook began. The platform initially served as a tool to connect with fellow students and friends from your university. The novelty of it all was that suddenly you knew where the next all campus rager or fraternity date party was happening. Sometimes you’d post profane, but innocent insults on a friend’s wall or stalk the girl/guy you met at the party you attended, wondering if you had the courage to ask them out (you didn’t). Aside from that, no one was on the platform all that much. You had to access it from a desktop computer, after all. Cell phones were either indestructible Nokia bricks or a Motorola Razor flip phone. Texting people was a pain in the ass and cost money, too. Just to get the letter “S” you’d have to smash the number 7 on four separate occasions, so text messages were insanely short and only as necessary. Instead, you called people and talked to them over the phone, just as you had always done.
Post-college, I loved logging onto the internet to watch Apple movie trailers, catching the latest viral video of a cat stuck hanging to a ceiling fan pull chain, or discovering new music videos. None of it consumed my life…
