Here's a little game. I was recently trying to figure out all of the
cultural turning points that I've participated in somehow. What has
changed everything?
Here's the rules. No personal turning points, this is cultural turning
points. I want to know what people thought about stuff that changed things
for everyone. Not Fads. Here's examples:
I saw the "Video killed the radio star" video. I had no clue what I was
watching. I was just thinking "wow, it's kinda like watching a musical
play". There was no way to tell by looking at that video that this was
going to change the way kids grew up. I was about 12 when MTV started.
Before that, we didn't have anything like that to "show us what was cool" -
styles and stuff came from watching what the cool kids we knew were wearing
and doing. The media really didn't have much effect on it all. Imagine
that.
When I downloaded my first copy of the Mosaic web browser, ther was no
netscape - there was no Internet Explorer. Mosaic was the first graphical
web browser. Nobody I knew had ever seen anything like it. By today's
standards, it sucks ass, but back then I was the only one I knew who had
even heard of the internet. Trying to explain to my friends the feeling of
looking at pages on servers in different parts of the world, and seeing
this all instantly on my screen was futile. They just couldn't understand
what I was talking about until years later. I saw the potential of what I
was looking at - but that potential hasn't materialized quite how I
pictured it.
Heh, with the way the world is going right now, I'd be careful what you
wish for!
____________________ Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas.
Erishkigal
Member
Posts: 62 Registered: 5/10/2002 Status: Offline
posted on 21/5/2003 at 07:42 PM
This is all very saddening. As interesting as it has been to read all your
memories, I guess as a 16 year I havent witnessed too many non-personal
pivotal events in my life. Hell, my first childhood memory was of watching
'Home & Away'.
*sigh* maybe if I get reincarnated, my next life will be more eventful.
____________________ Let viagra bring the magic back.
Starlight
Extreme Fanatic
Posts: 618 Registered: 27/9/2002 Status: Offline
posted on 21/5/2003 at 02:13 AM
I remember being over at a friend of a friend's house in about 1985, and
checking out their new Compact Disc Player. I thought it was really cool
that it worked like it did, but I remember making a comment about wondering
how long that idea will last before they try another one. *chuckles*
____________________ "When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never
tried before." ~Mae West
Ironboots
Extreme Fanatic
Posts: 893 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
posted on 19/5/2003 at 07:39 PM
"So hurry up and start your own UFO cult so you too can be remembered for
3000 years!"
____________________ Piggy's got the Conch!
KatB
Fanatic
Posts: 241 Registered: 16/7/2002 Status: Offline
posted on 19/5/2003 at 04:13 PM
I was in the north of France, making lunch & listening to the radio, when
the Berlin wall came down. That was pretty awesome - three years earlier
I'd been on a visit to some of the German military border stations...
Weird.
And coming home from a trip in the forest, switching on my cell-phone, and
being told there had been aeroplanes crashing into the WTC...
The first night of the first war on Iraq made a pretty big impression on me
too, I got exceptionally drunk that night.
Kraftwerk - need I say more?
I'm also rather interested in observing the UFO-believers, I have a
sneaking suspicion they might be replacing the Christians in a couple of
centuries. SERIOUSLY! Think about it - same stuff, same myths, only with
a modern context. Yep, I do believe we are witnessing a new world religion
in it's early stages.
____________________ All stressed out and no one to choke...
Dolorosa
Extreme Fanatic
Posts: 856 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
posted on 18/5/2003 at 11:28 PM
I remember Abaddon. Heh heh...
____________________ In the valley of the Goats, the Goat Fucker is King
AloneSoul
Fanatic
Posts: 522 Registered: 6/7/2002 Status: Offline
posted on 18/5/2003 at 01:31 PM
Hasn’t anyone yet covered Space Invaders, Pac Man, Atari or the NES?
My memory is hereditory. And not only that but I did not say I had no
memories, I said that memories are indistinguishable from each other in
terms of their importance to yourself or the rest of the world. Since we do
not have the congative capacity to recognise turning point when they occur,
the memories we thing of as being fundamental to the framework to the way
we have processed our lives are in fact only that way in hindsight.
____________________ Light is changing to shadow, and casting a shroud over all we have known.
guttersnipe
Coward
Posts: 7 Registered: 13/5/2003 Status: Offline
posted on 17/5/2003 at 04:40 PM
I took part in the booing of good charlotte off of the stage in 1998
they started as a "punk" band in baltimore
i dunno.. im young
err.. anyone remember those nanopets?
____________________ Real goths dont wear hot topic... they wear victoria's secret.
Remy
Occasional Poster
Posts: 34 Registered: 29/4/2003 Status: Offline
posted on 17/5/2003 at 03:25 AM
I was visiting the western part of Berlin with my parents a year before the
wall came down. When we saw it being torn down a year later on TV they told
me we could have been shot, only for standing where all those people
were standing now. It was quite... impressive to hear that, even for a
seven year old child.
____________________ "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of
nothing." - Oscar Wilde
Anonymous
Posts: 116 Registered: 14/4/2002 Status: Offline
posted on 17/5/2003 at 12:50 AM
Crimeny how could I have forgotten THAT?! I even remember them selling
peices of it at the bon marche around xmas to help raise funds for
rebuilding berlin. It was a strange feeling seeing those chucks of stone,
some with grafitti some without, for sale in the BON, of all places, but I
really really wanted one. I think they were selling them for $100 bucks a
piece or something....
I do remember watching it on TV with my dad. And when the school officials
were bitching about the cost of replacing all those textbooks and maps that
had the big red area marked "USSR" and spoke of the Soviet Union in present
tense, instead of past.
Man, even movies from that time were outdated when the USSR fell. Man, who
is the Italian Stallion gonna fight if there's no more big bad brick
pounding russian megamen to box?
Merry_Widow
Fanatic
Posts: 598 Registered: 24/8/2002 Status: Offline
posted on 16/5/2003 at 12:43 PM
I remember when the Berlin wall came down. That was pretty cool.
____________________ Okay, dazzle me.
Anonymous
Posts: 116 Registered: 14/4/2002 Status: Offline
posted on 16/5/2003 at 10:52 AM
Wank.
I'm sorry you don't have a memory to contribute, abby baby, all doom and
gloom and no "back in the day" makes for a very booring boy.
Abbadon
Fanatic
Posts: 499 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
posted on 16/5/2003 at 10:14 AM
There are no cultural turning points, only spirals in its downwards fall
towards self-destruction at the hands of its own citizens.
____________________ Light is changing to shadow, and casting a shroud over all we have known.
dead-cell
Fanatic
Posts: 344 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
posted on 15/5/2003 at 11:51 AM
Cloneing, LapTops, Viagra, Jonny Carson's last show, both the wars with
Iraq, fiber optic wires, cable modems, and dsl.
____________________ co-worker: "Your gay!?"
myself: "Didn't you see my rainbow pin?"
co-worker: "I just thought you liked skettles."
-(yes, it actually happened to me)
Shade
Fanatic
Posts: 289 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
posted on 15/5/2003 at 09:34 AM
I voted for the first time in years against Prop 121 in California on some
day in 1993 (I think, it may have been '94) but shortly after that the
proposition passed into law, and california bacame the first state to ban
smoking in public places, restaurants, bars, &tc.
____________________ It is only through the lack of sex that humanity derives the need for an
all encompassing blind love. And in that moment of extreme horniness with
no relief in sight, in that moment can be found the birth of religion.
-Me
callei
Extreme Fanatic
Posts: 759 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
posted on 15/5/2003 at 07:46 AM
genetic mapping, genetically altered foods, organ transplant, pace makers,
7-11s, smart drugs, designer drugs, AIDS, riddlin, thong bikinis, low
emmission car laws, gay rights, VCRs,
____________________ Real goths wear silver and crosses to keep the werewolves and vampires
away.
Xaoswolf
Fanatic
Posts: 463 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
posted on 14/5/2003 at 01:31 PM
Actually Betty, Betamax was a much better format than VHS, but, since it
was more expensive, and they had shitty marketing nobody cared. Laserdisc
and Divx had the same problems.
My first computer was an IBM I believe, we scrapped it and then stepped up
to something a little less shitty, then I got to behold the wonders of the
486 and WIN 3.1.
Of course, all of my games still ran in DOS but at least I had a mouse by
then...
____________________ Sometimes I dream about dinosaurs shopping for cargo shorts at the Gap.
Does that make me a bad person?
Xaox, I had pong too *lol* a BIG fucking console with a switch on either
side for each player, it weighed about 5 lbs *ha* THEN we got an atari, and
I swear my dad used to spend HOURS playing "river raid". He'd only play
THAT game, and the scary thing was he was REALLY good at it too. I think
ours got sold in a garage sale after we got the Nintendo, and he hasn't
played videogames since. For his birthday I got him a Playstation 1, and
got him the activision CD comp, which has like 50 old activision games on
it, including river raid, and I thought he was gonna PEE himself.
betamax *sigh* they really thought they were onto something huh? *lol*
Betamax and Laserdisc were sort of like tech go-betweens in a rush to come
out with the next big thing, and were good ideas, just underdeveloped in
the rush to come out with the "new thing" FIRST.
I also saw something at the toystore a while ago that threw me off.
Who remembers "mini tapes"? You know, itty bitty tapes with itty bitty
tape players with headphones that had one song on each side. The problem
was you could only get the songs that the company that made the tapes and
players wanted to make, so you were stuck with the Bangles "walk like an
egyptian/manic monday" New Kids on the block, Debbie Gibson, or Wilson
Phillips. Well anyway they're BACK again, but the wierd thing is that
they've made absolutely no progress whatsoever and you can still only get
crappy music with one song per side. I think McDonalds was giving them out
in happy meals even.
ANd speaking of McDonalds...I remember the great switch from styrofoam
containers to cardboard. It was wierd not hearing your lunch squeak in the
bag every time it shifted.
____________________ Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas.