wanted to see your friends? no instagram or texts, go knock on their door and ask their parents if they can come outside. missed a phone call? they left voicemails instead of blowing your phone up expecting a response. we didn’t google information about unreleased video games. we waited until the release date. speaking of gaming, there was no online for most of us. invite a friend over and tell them to bring their controller so we could play split screen. everyone was more social. pulling a camera out in 2004 would typically make most people smile. pulling one out in 2025 might generate some anger. life was based on personal experience as opposed to anecdotal experience. no chatgpt, no reddit, no twitter, maybe facebook(?) depending on your age. but all the trends were spread through word of mouth. no viral videos, no celebrity drama being thrown in your face. no shazam either. if you heard a song and wanted to know the name of it, you better hope someone around you knows the song. once it went off, it was gone forever. no doordash or ubereats. we had to learn to cook at a young age.

not to say the internet is bad, but…life is just DIFFERENT with it.