What are you not nostalgic for?

People smoking everywhere

I don't miss only having 3 channels to watch and having to be home at a particular time to watch something.

Getting paid by check instead of direct deposit.

The school bullying.

Smoking.

Do you know why all the wall paint and curtains of the 70s and 80s never included pristine white? Yes, that’s why. I’m convinced the choices of golds, oranges, and browns were just giving in to the inescapable film of nicotine tinge on everything, everywhere.

To this day, when I see “cream”, “ecru”, “chiffon” or any other creative name for not-quite-white, I think of nicotine stains.

Restaurant smoking was the worst.

I’ve never, and this is likely why. Growing up in that acrid awfulness was a great deterrent.

I do not feel nostalgia for the information isolation and bottleneck prior to the late 90's, like needing the newspaper classified ads to find a job, music discovery was primarily limited to local FM radio (although I'm totally disenfranchised from streaming ads with a little bit of music added into the gaps), and cable TV as the only form of home entertainment. I am nostalgic for the age of ownership and citizenship. I hate neo feudalism and the corruption of the tech bro oligarchy, but I digress.

The fact that I can have New Pipe content filled with people holding masters and doctorate degrees while communicating in a layperson format is awesome. I can't imagine how terrible physical disability would have been if I couldn't take a break from a project, like right now, and feel like I'm in a casual conversation with a real group of people despite being in bed hurting. It lacks the same psychological depth as in person interchange, and people often fail to understand the depth or specificity of what am talking about here, but it is better than nothing by a long shot. The negativity of the average anon seems to get better with time in the present age. We are still not at a point where we can be wrong in a truly civil way and see value in people. We do not seem to process that we are all evolving and a growing mess of change at various levels, but we are getting there slowly and we are a long way away from the negativity of the early internet. So yeah, if this is the information age, I do not feel nostalgic about the previous information bottleneck.

Leaded gas

VHS tapes, and having to rewind them.

Although the ability to record almost anything on a cheap VHS tape was nice, now everything has copy protection.

I don't miss having to have a separate device for digital photography. I remember having to pay 4 or 500 for a decent digital camera that fits in your pocket. When I got my first smart phone about 15 years ago, I took a picture with it and compared it to a decent Canon and a decent Fuji camera, that were one the best ones you could get in Best buy at the time for that budget. I compared the images and they sucked compared to my phone. Smh. Now my phone is around 4 or 500 and way better than basic digital cameras you can fit in your pocket, with way more functionality.

School. I don't miss any of it.

You see movies and TV shows romanticising middle/high school a lot, as though it's all about parties, friends, hanging out, and getting into relationships. It's not that. Just an endless barrage of busywork with the occasional holiday.

Cable television.

Every time I visit my mom she has it on and I can't believe I spent an entire childhood putting up with that shit. I can't even watch it while I'm there. Too frustrating.

As trivial as it sounds, pornography.
Imagine having to pull out the trench from the winter drawer and drive to another town's smutt shop, so they don't recognize you, every time you feel like wanking

I actually miss that all the things take a wile to start or function. Im not happy with this fast life were all its instantly. That only give me anxiety.

Changing CDs just to listen to a few songs from a different album. Also carrying around CDs.

Vaporwave... It was cool for like 2 minutes in 2015 but it got old very quick. Just get any 80s song and slow it down on some free audio software. In a lot of ways it could be seen as a precursor to other trash like nightcore or breakcore.

My childhood. I don't understand people who do. Mine was mostly loneliness, confusion, trauma, emotional neglect, guilt, shame, some abandonment, some physical abuse, etc. Every day has been a step towards better than the previous. I don't want to or miss anything going backwards.

Cassette tapes. Sure, they where handy and cheap, but the sound quality wasn't great and got worse the more you use it.

Cars that would vapor lock when driving in the mountains.

Gay jokes on TV. You know the kind. "it's funny because it's gay", very prevalent on series like Friends. Friends is a great show even today, but I do not miss the gay jokes.

collecting wood for heating.

Smokers.

Not that gasoline cars are gone (unfortunately) but I personally won’t ever go back to it. Electric cars are just so much better in any way except range and charge time. But those are honestly overblown topics that you won’t think much about in your daily life once you got used to it.

Lemmy.ml leading up to the election.

Having to do yard work or setting up holiday decorations outside. Ever since moving from a house to an apartment, I've had zero yard work outside of picking up dog shit when walking my brother's dogs and the closest I've come to holiday decorating is setting up a fake indoor Christmas tree and decorating it.

Used to have to do a lot of leaf picking up and weed pulling growing up. Never liked it and still don't because of how long it'd take and how I don't like getting dirt dirty. Also, I was never a massive fan of decorating outside, specifically just Halloween and Christmas, because my family used to have a ton of decorations and my mom always wanted them a certain way, even if that meant taking a few down and moving them. Lots of work over a weekend. Looked good afterwards, but I can't say I've missed putting stuff up. I'll leave that to other people like the people near me who for some reason still have Halloween decorations up.

Reagan being president. No, not even now.

Netbooks. Jfc that performance of a mid-tier smartphone whereby they'd become unusable in a few years for anything heavier than lxqt or some tiling wm, a simple music player like audacious, vim and static websites (accessed only using something lightweight like Netsurf, Badwolf or Palemoon as well). I don't remember what happened to mine but I'm pretty sure that even mpv with no scripts would drop frames like crazy on FHD x265 matroska videos. I'm so glad that ultrabooks started to become more affordable and nowadays I'd be able to buy an i7 t440s for the price of my acer aspire one back in 2011.

CRT displays. The day I replaced my old CRT with a LCD I thought I hope I never use one of these again.

I don’t miss dial-up internet,

Nobody "misses" 56kbit/s.

I don’t even like the sound because it’s just digital screeches

When I hear that sound now I am very briefly returned to the excitement I felt in the 90s. It was an age of wide-open possibilities, free from commercial influence. Full of patience and anticipation.

Oh well.

Anonimity, privacy, and the dream that the world was full of intelligent kind people.

Non-shitty affordable gaming. No Internet required, no updates, no game breaking bugs if you bought it on day one. Just bring your Game Boy Colour in the back seat of the car on vacation, bring a shitload of AA's and finish Pokémon Blue 3 times in a few weeks.

Polio

I don't miss being in my 20s. I was broke, miserable, sometimes homeless and kind of a shit. I had a lot of fun and good memories but my living situation was miserable.

Big family gatherings. I did not particularly enjoyed them growing up (I come from big extended families) but when I became a parent they were unbereable so I just stopped attending. I couldn't fathom to subject my child to all that nonsense. Best decision ever! While cousins fight over who brings what side dish for Christmas I will be relaxing in a hammock by the beach, thank you very much.

H0w ppl usd 2 r8 in da 2000s

And the extremely crass culture that came with it.

I very much enjoy online shopping and am not nostalgic for driving all over town to find a part or thing only to settle for something that's a partial match for what I want and much more than I wanted to spend. If a local retailer happens to have what I am looking for, I'm more than happy to purchase it in store, but almost always know exactly where it is in the store and how many are in stock.

I watched Love Actually a couple nights ago and I was thinking at the end that I miss all the life we used to live. My younger years were so social, always surrounded by people, always doing things with other people. Now everything takes place through a screen for me, and I rarely see the people I care about. So I'm nostalgic for the period in my life when social gatherings, and interaction was common, and not something that takes place occasionally.

Like others here, childhood. I am not at all nostalgic for childhood. It wasn't awful but being an adult is much better.

Music I am not nostalgic about - is this a gender difference? Both my ex and my husband listen to the music of their youth, I like plenty of old stuff but also like so much newer music, it just keeps coming, so much good music. It's just delightful to know there is so much talent and creativity in the world.

Not nostalgic in general, actually. There are plenty of current problems, but people who think the past was better are either old white men, or crazy.

People thinking violence is wrong