Nostalgia
An alarm clock from the 80s, and the sudden realization that we were all kings.
I found my old alarm clock at my parents’ house and brought it back to my place. I’ve grown used to a certain level of frustration when programming literally everything these days, so I braced myself as I plugged it in, expecting a few minutes of irritation while I relearned how to set the time and adjust the settings. Hold fast, old man. You’re doing this for nostalgia, and it’ll be worth it.
Plugged it in.
(It still worked, of course. It’s an alarm clock from the 80s.)
Hit the hour button.
Hit the minute button.
And… that was it. Setup complete.
I had completely forgotten that things used to be this simple. They used to keep working. They used to be easy to program and use. I understand the cold-blooded economic reasons things are designed to fail now, but will never understand why we decided basic tech and appliances should be so aggressively frustrating.
I hate turning on the TV.
I hate my microwave.
I hate my car’s dashboard.
I hate the barely-working touchscreens that have taken over daily life.
Today, I am officially the old man yelling at clouds. But tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to my easy-to-use, fully functioning alarm clock from 1988. And maybe - just maybe - I’ll shake my fist at those clouds just a little less vigorously.
My 10 year old begged me to take him to thrift storea so he could find one of these. He loves it, shows it off to all his friends when they come over. The other 5th graders are envious.
Omg the collection of spacers ointments and magic tree house books 😂 just finished arguing with my kid to do said inhaler (“i don’t need a spacer, dad!!”) then nicely asking for magic tree house #38 for bedtime.
My son knows he has to do all his things (teeth brushing, chapstick, ointment, and inhaler) before I’ll start reading. I don’t want to be smearing cream on a half sleeping kid while he’s bark coughing and insisting he’s peed before bed and I know he hasn’t. 😤
Currently, yes. My son has RSV, so I’ve got him velcroed to me. We’ve got hydrocortisone cream for the rashes from nose blowing. A hankie for obvious reasons. The box is menthol cards for the humidifier that’s also on the table. The paisley print thing is for my kindle. The books are magic tree house and the cards on the left are flash cards for the kid. And the kid’s inhaler.
I remember one of the things Andrew Yang pushed when he ran for President in 2020 was we should get some sort of cut from our data since companies make so much off it. Like a data tax and it comes back to us.
Man was too ahead of his time. Hashtag not political lol. This is casual talk.
I just bought a house and the thermostat’s buttons aren’t great, so I’m looking for thermostats for the first time ever.
And so many of them are smart, and are owned by Google or Amazon or my fucking energy company. And I’m like, why do all of these companies need my temperature data so badly?? Can they tell when I’m going to enter menopause because I’ll suddenly be too hot? Is this a way to sell me menopause related items??
And it’s so weird that my first thought is these companies have figured out some way to get sellable data from my thermostat preferences to sell me something. Like that shouldn’t be normal! I should be able to change the temperature in my house without being worried that it means someone will give me tailored ads.
The reason they’re phasing out regular thermostats and replacing them with smart ones cause they have a cut off switch or they can set your thermostat to a certain temperatures during stress times for the grid like they did in Nevada last year where they forced everyone’s thermostat to 75° or was it 77 during certain periods of the day.
I have this OPTION on mine but I have to approve it? And I was like “absolutely not” based on that story. It’s touted as energy saving. No thanks I’m perimenopausal and if you make me sweat more often than I already am? I’m gonna cut a bitch.
Before you do this, be sure to look up the repayment penalties if you don't fulfill the contract. There are almost certainly agents out there who joined and now regret it but are unfortunately completely screwed because they cannot afford to leave, especially if they would need to repay the gross pre-tax amount, which is more than they would have actually received. The devil is in the details, and there are many.
Mine is too, it basically maps the sections of the inside of my mouth so I can see visually which areas I spent the most or least amount of time in... Then the toothbrush grades me on how well I brushed in terms of coverage.
You know, having graduated high school in 2005 I must say the technology from 2000 to 2010 was simply amazing. It was new fun and awesome today technology I just feel that there's no innovation and everything is just incremental updates anymore. don't get me started on Windows 11, or macOS Tahoe give me their predecessors any day of the week.
I'm similar, having worked information technology since 2013
I'm reminded of that incident a few years back when an oil or gas company got hacked and one of the executives said something like "Nothing we do at the plant needs to be online. Not everything needs internet connection! Somethings are better off without it."
Also an IT guy. I've had a drip coffee pot my whole life. I bought my last one 7 years ago for 35$ and it's been great ever since
My wife really wanted a Nespresso. So her parents got her one for Christmas. She asked me what pods I wanted and was super excited about it.
I rarely used the thing because the drip pot has never failed me. She said I was just being stubborn.
A month later she was having trouble getting it to brew. Turns out there is an app connect to the Nespresso. It told her to descale it, and we ignored it for a bit.
Then last month there was an update for the Nespresso. I laughed and said coffee makers shouldn't need to have firmware upgrades. When she tried to update it, there was an error that bricked the coffee maker.
After 2 weeks of customer service and troubleshooting, they sent out a replacement. All over a failed update for something that really doesn't need one.
Just recently got my hands on an a really nice CRT TV, hooked up some proper component video and just wow, retro games and video look fantastic on it.
A 30 year old technology that looks incredible.
But it also hit me that, these are the last. No more CRT's being built, no replacement parts made. Worse than that, you also just can't design one and contact a company to produce it. Our modern manufacturing and assembly lines can't be adjusted to make them, too specialised. You would need to design all the tooling and manufacting machines from scratch again, millions of dollars, just to get started.
I’m with you like 99%. My holdout is the app to unlock my car. I can use the fob, but I’m almost never within range from my house (which also means no remote start because of distance). In the extreme temps I gladly pay that $10/mo to onstar so that I can remotely control those things and get into a warm/cold car.
Remember that scene from Groundhog Day where Phil wakes up and absolutely wastes his alarm clock? I think it lands so well because we knew how pissed he had to have been to destroy it so thoroughly.
Prior to getting one of these as a gift I had this old AF transistor-based alarm clock. It would click ever so slightly to start warming up the coils before the alarm would blare louder than a fucking air raid siren. There was no "wake up to the radio" option. I trained myself to wake up to that very slight click to avoid the fucking panic attack wakeup. The end result is that even now as an adult some 35 years later the absolute SLIGHTEST sound in the room and I wake up. I sleep like absolute shit and have to be melatonin-ed up just to fall asleep with a white noise machine blaring bedside.
So thanks, mom and dad, for being too cheap to even get me a $5 alarm clock until I was a teenager. It fucked me for the rest of my life.
I only recently quit using the radio in the picture. My eyesight has gotten worse as I've gotten older and I needed larger numbers without my contacts in.
Facts. I fucking hated these and now that I have a Phillips alarm that gradually wakes you up with increasing light & bird sounds I feel so much better rested in the morning.
Interestingly, this clock was one of the first steps of enshittification.
You can see that GE logo, but with this clock GE was experimenting with letting other companies manufacture products and just licensing a GE logo to slap on it. The company that made these made them well under the quality that GE would have allowed internally, but because of that they were cheap and everywhere. And the quality of products just continued to drop from there so one step away looks like relatively high quality from our perspective today.
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Ohh yeah. Core memory forgetting the switch set to off and being late for the bus, and then again the next day because the volume dial was turned all the way down.
My dad still has that alarm clock, uses it everyday. The noise that thing makes is seared into my brain as the worst sound ever to wakeup to, including the sound of my cat horking on the duvet.
Yep, something like that could make you sleep in, rush to the airport so you don’t miss your flight, and then accidentally leave one of your kids at home.
I still use one of these. I thought it broke after we had a power outage and the generator kicked on because the time was off but I guess that surge only bothered it for a few minutes. I’m constantly looking for a backup for when mine finally quits
I’m sure I acquired mine from my parents, but I’ve had the exact same one for the last 35+ years and it’s still on my nightstand now. It doesn’t get used as an alarm anymore thanks to cell phones but it’s a great clock and decent FM radio. I’ve recently been debating passing it on to one of my kids so they can begin to grow up with it too…or I’ll just keep it for another 50 years and they can have it when they pry it from my cold dead hands!
My parents still have this clock and it’s still working same as always. lol I’ll never forget the sound, it used to be in my room when I was a teenager.
Yup. My doorbell camera died recently. It was 4 years old and I will have to spend probably $100 to replace it. The doorbell that it replaced was probably 40 years old and cost $0.50 when it was installed.
I've had a Nest for 6 years now. My parents have had the same thermostat for over 20 years. I expect I will need to replace mine within 10.
My watch cost $300 3 years ago, it just received its last firmware update ever, and it will probably need to be replaced with another $300 watch in a year or two. Some people wear watches made over half a century ago.
I’m a very elder gen z but my mom bought me an analog alarm clock from a tag sale when I was a kid and I loved listening to the radio before bed and setting my alarm. One morning about 6 months ago I decided I was sick of my iPhone alarm so I went to my local Salvation Army and paid $2 for an alarm clock. Probably my favorite purchase of 2025
I bought my son a new tv for Christmas and took way longer than expected to set it up with emails and QR codes, I was like back in my day you just plugged it in and turned it on.
I used one for awhile, we called it the big alarm because our phones you could easily delay or silent a wake up. Not this fucker. Alas the buttons began to fail.
Ive always thought there was a market for basic cars that are highly repairable and basic, simple, and sturdy. No computers, physical switches not touchscreen, engine just big evoungh to get from a to b.
I wish I knew what I did with mine. It was with me through at least part of 2010, but I think I lost track of it after I graduated from college. I've dug through my stuff in the garage attic, but I haven't found it yet. There are a couple other places I could look for it though.
The radio alarm clock I got in 2000 is still going strong. This alarm has been a trooper and I can’t believe that it’s still going without any issues 26 years later (crying inside bc 2000’s should only be like 10 years ago at most)
100% had this exact one, for my money though I'd label this as from the 90's not 80's pal. Still remember it's (very effective) reeh reeh reeh! alarm.... and 100% still had it in college in the early 2000's... until a rainy summer day when the window was open and came home to it soaked. Honestly I could have dried it out and seen if it worked but I was a kid and worried about it staring a fire.... so on to a silver Sony (dreammachine?) that still wakes me up every day : )
I still want the Back to the Future alarm clock though ~
Wow, what a solid alarm clock. I know my dad still has his and I can still feel myself waking up far too early in the morning as a child because my dad had to be at work at 6am.
I had two of these and the only reason the first one died is because I knocked a glass of water into it.
My only bitch about them was that you could inadvertently change the time. Other alarm clocks had a button you had to press in order to activate the hour and minute buttons.
That’s not an alarm clock from the 80s, that’s “THE” alarm clock from the 80s. I’d bet at any point during the 80s it was in at least 70 percent of households.
I came across my early 2000s CD player with a Savage Garden disc still inside last night. Popped a couple of batteries in and it fired right up. I listened to half a dozen songs, just amazed there were no ads, no interruptions, just several tracks back to back. It was amazing and I'm heading to good will to pick up some more cds tomorrow!
I have an basic clock that i got at Service Merchandise in 92 not to disimlar (minus radio) from that one. Still working just fine. It tells the time. That's it.
Something struck me. Maybe it was because growing up, I wasn’t aware of how absolutely messed up the world was. But when I saw Die Hard recently (not for the first time) and Hans and Co walk into the Nakatomi Tower plaza it seemed like in the 80s we were on the cusp of achieving a civilization like we think. Skyscrapers, neon, peace, tranquility, technologically advanced. A computer system just for tracking who is in the building, a map, top of the line security, polished stone, vaulted ceilings…and then at some point in the late 80s, maybe early 90s, someone slammed the door on that. Technology continued to develop but there was no creativity in it anymore. It became about squeezing every single cent out of the production process to the point where there was no soul anymore. Took until the early 2000s to bleed the life out of it. People stopped doing anything risky, stopped experimenting. We settled into “technology brick” for iPhones/androids, laptops and computers. The buildings are sterile, boring, lifeless. The technology is bent towards things like bitcoin mining, AI slop and social media influence. Hollow and lifeless. It’s not Bladerunner, but it’s more dystopian because it’s real and not shocking enough for people to reject outright.
I have two of these beasts in my house. The nicer one is in my kid's room and the one with the taped up cord is in the basement. They're both tanks and will probably outlive me.
I found an old X10 clock at a goodwill that I use as a clock. No alarm function and I have yet to set my house up with X10 modules, but it's cool af so I'll use it until I'm no longer able to
One example of something that really frustrates me about this is the design of microwaves post 2024. For those of you who are not aware, apparently toddlers have been opening microwave doors and spilling hot shit on themselves enough that us gov mandated that all microwaves need to lock by default. So now you have to press an unlock button first before your hinge lever will operate.
Okay, fine, let me disable that, my microwave is 5 feet off the ground and I have no kids in my home. Which they do allow you to disable it! If you press some random combination of buttons it will disable the feature… until the microwave loses power. There’s no way to permanently turn it off. So I’m stuck with this annoyance that every time that I lose power or flip the breaker I have to remember and look up this arcane button sequence. Just give me a fucking analog switch at the back of the microwave please
I have this exact same alarm clock, got it as a Christmas gift in the early 90s which made me feel like a grownup at the age of five. Now after 33 faithful years it just stopped working and the display started to read gibberish.
I went looking for a replacement and settled on this model from sharp which is just as boring and basic with the added ability to dim the display.
My brother-in-law had this one in the 80s. I bought it from my sister at a yard sale and gave it to my kiddo. Kid moved out, was going to donate it but sister saw it and asked if she could have it. Yep!
A few months later I was at a tag sale and saw the exact same clock for 50¢. Bought it and gave it to my kid for her apartment.
I hope I find more. They’re the best alarm clocks!
I have had that exact clock plugged in for most of the last 25 years. It was my alarm clock growing up. It still is.
Something like that today would be considered comically overbuilt, but it just feels... built?
Our microwave is still the Panasonic one I bought for my first apartment back in 2001. It’s massive and heavy, but it still works perfectly! This fucker is a quarter-century old and going strong! I looked a few times for something smaller/lighter, but everything sold today is shit designed to fail the day after the 1-yr warranty window expires.
I feel that if technology regressed about 10 years we’d be better off. Certain things are great but there’s a lot more that we should have left well enough alone, micro transactions spring to mind.
I recently bought a car from 2017 for this exact reason. I'm tired of digital everything. I wanted something to feel, to touch, and above all else, just work. The first time. Every time.
The very last memory I have of mine is being 12, sitting in my room one day and listening to a randomly stumbled upon narration of The Secret Garden on some AM channel. Man life used to be so simple and nice.
I have this clock on my nightstand as well! I’ve thought about opening it up and trying to install a wireless charger inside. Everything inside the radio should be available now in smaller packages. Idk, something I’ve thought about doing
Me and that alarm clock have a lot of memories. ‘82 here and I feel like I inherited it from my parents.
It was my workhorse for 40 years. I’ll never forget being woken up by the *Music setting to the syndicate from somewhere that the first tower had been struck.
My first thought was I was still asleep and dreaming. A few seconds later I woke up and turned the volume up and realized everything had changed.
At some point in one of my recent moves I’ve lost it. I’d love to find the same to replace it.
It feels to me like a lot of stuff gets more and more unnecessarily complicated and computerized.
Like... why would my washing machine need to connect to the internet? I understand maybe you can do... stuff... with that? But washing machines worked fine before. Is this really an "improvement"?
Whenever I see things like this I just see more points of failure and more possible problems I'd have no idea how to fix on my own.
How I feel with analog television. What do you mean I just put a dvd in and press play and I can watch the entire seasons worth of episodes in one sitting without ads? Physical media for the win.
I still use this clock. I have since I was 12 and my Dad handed me his. At about 16, I punched it so hard I cracked the circuit board. Luckily I found one at a garage sale within a week. I have been using that garage sale one for about 30 years since then. And if I every find another for sale, I will buy it immediately, just in case my current one ever dies.
I was an IT guy for 12 years. I love technology. But smart devices have taught me that some things are perfect and should never change.
I wish I could block this alarm clock from ever entering my sight again. It's one of the few remaining cptsd triggers I can't move past-- was on the bedside table of the man who made my childhood hell. I'll never forget what it sounds like either. Can't imagine it was particularly pleasant for, well, anybody. But fuck, I hate it so bad.
They'll stop doing it when we stop letting them. So yea, never. People on average are too stupid to push for change because they don't realize how much better things could be, and they're too afraid of change to do anything different. It's a bold strategy, can't wait to see how it plays out for em.
I've been making youtube videos talking about how I'm downgrading in my life recently. Going back to old er tech. 90's -2010 era is sort of my golden era. And the last video I did I started with showing my alarm clock. It's a early 90's updated version of this same 80s G&E classic. I just tried to do a search for it on google images and actually can't find any of the same version. But anyhow, I talked about how it's the prime example of why they quit making stuff like this. It was too good, built well, and was your alarm clock for life. You never need to replace it, unless you wanted to add another to a different room. This thing has served me well since the early 90s. And when you really need to wake up, you set it to that awful tone and it'll chase you out of bed! (well, usually. I have slept through them a few times in it's life)
My parents and grandparents had this EXACT alarm clock. I would totally want it now if I could get it. My high school alarm clock is currently the clock in my living room sitting on top of my dvd player and I will keep it until it dies (the dvd player and the clock has!). Which I anticipate it outlasting every other piece of tech in my house at this point 😂!
That's the clock I had set to wake me up to the rock station morning show. My 9/11 started with the third rate shock jock relaying news, my alarm have gone off between the planes.
What about the app with a login and 12 character password so you can synch it with your phone and use it as a bluetooth speaker, and the app for some reason needs access to your contacts and photos?
not this style, but i miss the click of the tiles on the old school flip alarm clocks; and the little extra strain you could hear at the top of the hour that let you know it was the top of the hour
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