Ah, the sweet scent of cassette tapes and the joyous crackle of dial-up internet. Nostalgia drips down like a melted popsicle on a hot summer day as we journey back to simpler times—like the time you had to actually commit your friends’ phone numbers to memory instead of relying on Siri to do the heavy lifting. But in this twisted timeline we now inhabit, it seems life is determined to slap us with a reality check that would make even the most dedicated member of the Breakfast Club cringe.
Let’s talk about the charm of the ‘80s and ‘90s, where your biggest worry was whether or not the school dance would have enough Space Jam merchandise to justify putting on those extraordinarily oversized acid-wash jeans. Fast-forward to today, and we’ve got young whippersnappers turning the concept of digital detox into an Olympic sport—meanwhile, I barely survived the week when I accidentally left my pager at home. Seriously, how do these kids derive joy from a life without Nintendo 64? I mean, can you even call it a “childhood” if you weren’t standing in line for hours to try a game that was only available for a limited time? There was literally a shortage, people. Kids today won’t know the pure thrill of squeezing a quarter into an arcade machine and praying to the gaming gods for unlimited lives.
And let’s not even get started on the music scene. In our era, we had bands that could scream, croon, or rap their way into your teenage angst. Now? We have TikTok stars who achieve fame for… well, let’s just say I’m still unclear on what qualifies as “talent.” The other day, I tried explaining cassette tapes to my nephew, and, bless his heart, he looked at me like I was describing how to call the operator to place a collect call. Just the other day, I caught myself yearning for the days when the only “streaming” was a trickle of water down the bathroom sink as I stood in line to buy a ticket for the latest film starring a very young Keanu Reeves. Today, we’re all Googling how to cancel our Netflix subscriptions faster than you can set a VCR timer.
So here’s to us, the original hipsters—who survived dial-up, survived Y2K, and traded in Blockbuster membership cards for a slew of online subscriptions. We might be nostalgic about the good ol’ days, but let’s face it: We’ve also learned to adapt to a world where nostalgia is just another product on a shelf, next to overpriced avocado toast and influencer merchandise. And while the world around us spins faster than a vinyl record in a turntable, we’ll just keep cranking that “Hey, Mister DJ” mixtape one last time, pretending that we don’t secretly wish for a return to simpler days, while giving ourselves a gentle pat on the back for surviving this chaotic reality.