When you connect a new device to a ‘smart’ tv, you must pay homage to the manufacturer with a ritualistic dance. Plugging and unplugging the device. Turning them on and off in the correct sequence like entering a konami code.
Every time you want to switch devices, the tv must scan for them. And god forbid you lose power, or unplug something. You are granted the delight experience of doing it all over again.
I have fond memories of the days of just plugging something in, and pressing the input button. Instant gratification. It was a simpler time.
What is some other tech that used to be better?
Instant messaging.
20 years ago, there were half a dozen competing major platforms (AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, etc), like today.
The difference is that you had your choice of half a dozen clients that could each talk to ALL of the platforms. Adium, Trillian, Kopete, etc.
Today’s kids have no idea what we lost to the god of profit.
I feel like AIM was the de facto god-emperor of IM platforms and the rest were just also-rans.
Maybe that was just my experience tho, but I feel like ICQ and IRC were older but more clunky, MSN and Yahoo were newer or contemporary but less dependable and had less buy in from the community.
Maybe it’s just my personal era, but MSN/Messenger was used solely in the group I grew up around. With maybe an addition of trillium eventually
In my bubble, MSN was the first messenger used by non-nerds. For me it was the third messenger after IRC and ICQ that i really used. Nerds were on IRC, Gamers on ICQ
really? opposite for me and my group back in the late 90s/early 00s. IRC was for gamers as it was easier to organize a group since most games at the time someone had to host and connect to their IP. ICQ was more for friends and nerd stuff.
MSN was for your friends and friends of friends, ICQ was gamers and pre-MSN friends, IRC was for pretending you were a 17 year old girl from California.
ICQ and IRC were older and more popular just before AIM. I first got online in 96 or 97 and then it was all mIRC and ICQ (Hell I still remember my ICQ number off the top of my head, 18982172) then I’d say around 99/00 it transitioned primarily to AIM with a bit of ICQ and other random chatrooms that were “cooler” than IRC like “The Palace” which was essentially irc but with avatars.
But then with Trillium or like Pigeon it all transitioned to that and in a weird way message boards circled back around and replaced chat rooms. Things just gradually got more and more isolated. Then Myspace and eventually Facebook replaced all of that and eventually discord just replaced everything.
I don’t use Discord, I can’t stand it. I miss the days of IRC and ICQ.
Text Messages killed instant message programs. Same “format”, but infinitely portable and won’t crash out your full screen game when you get a new message.
This is an American thing. In the rest of the world WhatsApp and the like still reign supreme.
WhatsApp is the same as texting in this regard.