'The instructions on the back of shampoo bottles.'
"I Feel Like People Think I’m The Weird Guy": 19 Things We Used To"Look At" Before Cell Phones, And I Forgot Some Of These Things Existedasked,"People who grew up before cell phones, what did you use to look at?" and the answers are nostalgic as well as pretty funny .
If you're down for a dose of pre-phone nostalgia, read on:"As a kid, I used to read absolutely everything I could get my hands on, especially when I was bored. If I didn't bring a book with me, sometimes that meant reading the ingredients on the back of a ketchup bottle. I don't even like ketchup, I just needed to read "At home, we would watch TV, listen to music, and read. It was much more common to carry a newspaper or a book with you. Like you would never go on a journey without one of these two things.""Many of us also carried a Walkman to play tapes or CDs. There was a great device a few years before the iPod/mp3 player came out called a mini-disc player, and it was the best personal music player ever. One thing I miss about the olden days is how new music coming out was more of an event. Like we would buy a new album and go to a friend's and just listen to the album together. We'd look forward to the video playing on the TV because we couldn't just watch it whenever we felt like it." "Books and magazines — and don’t let people pretend it was highbrow or more sophisticated. Magazines were filled with short fluff filler material.""Now, when I sit in a waiting room and don’t have my phone out, I feel like people think I’m the weird guy for not staring at my phone. No, I have a right to look in your general direction." "I observed the world more, people-watching while in public. At the kitchen table, I'd read the food packaging. In the bathroom, I'd read whatever product was around, like toilet paper packaging, or just had introspective moments about the day I had or interactions with others.""There was a lot more local media then. You would have two or three local radio stations, a few different local, provincial or national news papers, taking the bus downtown and going to each of the three or four magazine stores and literally standing in the aisles for hours reading magazines about music, or art or history standing there in the store and only buying the best of the 17 or so you looked at to take home." "TV, books, album covers while we listened to the album, movies, clouds, landscapes, the road beneath my feet while riding my bike, art, streakers, the path between my horse's ears, whatever is passing by outside the window while driving by in a car, and the moon." "I'd walk through the woods near my house to the railroad tracks, put pennies on them, and wait for trains to smush them. I drew pictures and wrote stories. Also, there was internet on the computer that I could only use if no one was using the phone ." "When in a car, I'd look out the window and imagine a little man running along while we drove. I'd read books, comics, magazines, whatever. Spend time staring out the window and daydreaming or looking at the patterns on the rugs we had." "They used to put toys in cereal boxes. We'd spend the morning fighting over who would rummage through the Cornflakes to find it. I also used to crochet and paint — still do." And as a final comment:"Put down your phone for an hour and see for yourself. Stop thinking it's purely a thing of the past. Just do it."So, what do you think? Tell me about whatever you used to"look at" before cell phones, down in the comments. Or, you can use this anonymous comments form. Who knows — your example could be part of a future BuzzFeed article!
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