its weird being 18, 19, 20 in 2016 because i remember going into kindergarten and seeing those chunky ass giant computers at the desk and then going through school while technology rapidly develops and graduate in a world where people can have the entire internet and more just in their pocket like idk its so strange to me
23 year old here. A few years off, but this really resonates with me.
I remember crowding around our huge, beige boxish emachine computer with my dad and listening to the dial up tone connect us to the internet so we could talk to our extended family on yahoo chat - oftentimes right after dad yelled across the house to anyone who wasn’t in the room not to use the phone.
I remember sharing a handmedown box computer with my sisters, and we would fight over it late into the night (our parents let us keep it in the bedroom we shared) to play neopets.
I remember watching VHSs with my two sisters, and if you put in the tape and it wasn’t rewound, you’d bicker about who put it back in the case last time as it whirred in the player. I remember the library slogan, “be kind and rewind” being engrained into my skull. I remember peeking into the VCR slot to try and figure out how it worked.
I remember waking up to the whine of analog TVs - that told you that someone else was awake. I remember the massive static that went across the screen when you turned it off - my sisters and I would stick paper sheets to the screen just as soon as we turned it off and see whose would stay on the longest. Repeat. The noise annoyed my mom, so if we kept at it for too long she’d come in and tell us off for it.
I remember listening to my favorite songs on cassette tape. I adopted an old cassette player from my mom, it was portable and clipped to your belt. I thought I was the coolest person ever. When my favorite tape unraveled, I was devastated.
I remember the old corded phone that used to be in our kitchen, and how the cord was always - always - hopelessly curled in on itself. I remember we had a bunch of spare corded phones from previous lines and such. There was a really smooth, sleek black one that I swore I would take when I was older - “in college”. By the time I was in college, of course, I’d have a cell phone.
I remember my dad (a software engineer and general computer nerd) had a massive collection of floppy discs.
I remember the day my mom got her first cell phone. It had a flip down button cover, a green monochrome screen about as big as your thumbnail, and an antennae that you had to pull out every time to use it.
I remember when we got our satellite dish for tv installed. They had to install it twice because the first time, it turned out the neighbors’ very tall bush was in the way.
I remember when DVDs came out, and a lot of the time you had to store one movie on two discs. Same for video games and CDs.
I remember playing Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail with my sisters, all day long. Those games were the most enthralling, challenging video games ever for us. I was obsessed with finding the harpy eagle and the pink dolphin. Also catching the biggest fish.
I remember when my dad got his first flat screen computer monitor. I remember thinking that it looked so flimsy.
I was in middle school when Razr phones were all the rage. I didn’t have one - but I was never a cool kid.
As a young teen, I remember entertaining myself on the 10 hour drive to my grandparents’ house with my Sony Walkman and a massive case of CDs. When I was really little, and my parents were really desperate to placate three tiny kids on such a long ride, they’d bring our mini TV/VCR unit (not flatscreen, mind you) and wedge it in-between their chairs so the three of us smushed in the back could watch the Lion King and Alladin, using a chain of two headphone splitting wires connected to the one headphone jack.
I remember getting my first iPod - a huge deal in my fairly frugal family. It was a Christmas gift from my parents, and I flipped out when I opened the box and saw the apple logo. It was a refurbished blue iPod mini. Heavy, no color on the tiny screen. It was my most prized possession. I kept it in a clear case, and for about a year I displayed a movie ticket in the back, the very first midnight premier I’d ever been to - Pirates of the Caribbean 2.
I remember getting an iPod touch, and the fact that you could connect to wifi with something so small absolutely blew my mind.
I remember when the iPhone first came out, and everyone was soooo skeptical about it. I remember wondering how on earth you were supposed to talk on it without mashing the touch screen buttons accidentally with your face.
I remember getting an HD TV. The first thing I watched on it was a game of baseball. I was blown away by the fact that you could actually see the ball throughout the entire game.
Now of course, I have an iPhone and a MacBook, a Wacom intuos tablet, an iPad mini and a really old iPod touch that may or may not work. Wifi is standard, DSL is a thing of the past, and corded phones are practically dinosaurs. I have a data plan and unlimited text and use my cellphone for everything.
Here’s what I love about the doritos gremlin d.va meme: Blizzard made this character and went, “Look, it’s a professional gamer prodigy who was so good that they became a mech pilot and a national hero but STEREOTYPE SUBVERSION instead of being a Mountain-Dew-chugging git-gud gremlin she’s a cute teenage girl!” And the internet went, “Seriously? Anime is littered with cute teenage girl mech pilots. You know what would be a real subversion? If the teenage girl weren’t cute or sexy but was instead the Mountain-Dew-chugging git-gud gremlin gamer of legend. Now THAT would be a plot twist.” AND SO IT IS.
And the more I think about it, the more I see that where the fandom stereotypes of Overwatch characters diverge from their official portrayal, it’s usually in the service of stereotype subversion. Reaper is supposed to be SUPER COOL DARK ROGUE but we’re all just like ”lol what a loser edgelord.” Soldier 76 is a CONFLICTED BROODING LONER ON A MISSION OF REVENGE so everyone has decided he’s Team Dad Extraordinaire who does nothing but collect small children and protect them forever. Zarya and Genji aren’t supposed to be sex objects, so they are; Hanzo and Widowmaker are, so they’re not. Mercy’s supposed to be team mom, but instead she’s 100% done with her dumbass squad who doesn’t realize that IF YOU RUN AWAY FROM ME I CAN’T HEAL YOU YOU FUCKWAD.
The Grim Reaper is no longer able to claim lives directly. Instead, when your time is up a mark appears on your body and it is the duty of every other person to kill you on sight.
I am not a careless person. I cover my tracks, monitor what I say, look before I cross the street. At least, I do now.
When I was 20 years old, I walked home reading a book. I was so engrossed that I failed to notice the heavy metal vehicle moving at my frail, human body at 40 mph.
It swerved, I stopped, no one was hurt, no one died. They never do.
It was only when I took the cookies out of the oven that I noticed the mark on my arm. I knew what it meant. It was my duty to report to the authorities to be murdered. If I didn’t, anyone who saw it would kill me on sight.
I didn’t want to die. I was only twenty years old! I hadn’t even finished college, much less gotten to all my grand plans and ambitions (never mind that I didn’t have any. I had time to plan out the rest of my life later. So I thought.)
I burned my arm on the cookie sheet. The scar covered the black mark somewhat, and I put a bandaid over it. The people at work didn’t question it.
After some time, the burn healed. The mark remained black over the scar, bigger now. I tried carving it out with a knife. It was winter now, and long sleeves were the norm - no one would notice my injury. The mark remained, the bloody lower layers of my skin black as death’s robes.
From then on I wore long sleeves. When I went to the doctor I covered it with paint and hoped they wouldn’t notice. They didn’t. I was lucky.
The mark grew.
I was in trouble when it reached my wrist. As soon as it covered my hand I would be discovered. I ran.
Soon I will be nothing but a shadow in the night. Perhaps some of the stories they tell of night creatures originate from people like me. Those who escaped, their marks covering them, even the whites of their eyes turned deepest black. In a way, we are no longer human. Isolated, undying, immortal, betrayers of nature’s most fundamental law: all things must come to an end.
If I outlive humanity, will I ever die?
When the sun goes nova, will I still exist?
When the universe ends, will I endure?
Or is death simply a shortcut to that end? When the last star has gone out and matter has been erased, will Death greet me with a weary sigh, saying “where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you for an eternity.”
At that point, will I even remember who is waiting for me?
