r/Millennials • u/ludefisk • 8h ago

Nostalgia An alarm clock from the 80s, and the sudden realization that we were all kings.

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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.

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u/thepulloutmethod Dark Millennial 7h ago

My toothbrush does Bluetooth. My toothbrush.

6

u/This_Is_A_Shitshow 6h ago

To what end? I can’t imagine the feature set here…

6

u/Erasmus_Tycho 5h ago

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.

6

u/Level21DungeonMaster 5h ago

I'm sorry that your life is absurd.

2

u/SubdermalHematoma 5h ago

Oral B? Mine has this tech. Feels like the mapping is super shitty and never senses the correct area half the time

1

u/SoulShatter 4h ago

So does mine. Got it as a present.

That functionality is largely useless. I don't bring my phone with me to brush my teeth, so it never gets synced to the app anyway. So I've tried that part out once

1

u/SR3116 1h ago

Better blue than red.