Okay, but this is genuinely adorable. I love how the first kid, after entering the number, was like “what do I do now?”. I bet the kid was trying to figure out where the “call” button was, because if you’re only used to cell phones, it’s not really intuitive that the call will automatically go through once you finish entering the phone number
These days, the concept of a dial tone is rather obsolete for a cellphone-centric world, so it isn’t a surprise these girls are young enough to be unfamiliar with it or the hookswitch. Only place you see traditional telephones are in office buildings and older homes that still use it.
When dial service was introduced, the Bell System had to put together instructional films to educate telephone users. So many people were used to being able to pick up and tell the operator who to call for them, so you had to suddenly learn where to find phone numbers. They didn’t even have pushbuttons telephones yet, just rotary dial.
That’s so fun! How we circle back on ourselves! This is so wholesome
That’s so fun! How we
circle back on ourselves!
This is so wholesome
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
oh my GOD
i was watching the second video (it’s super fascinating, highly recommend)
and the operator presenter was demonstrating what to do if you don’t hear the dial tone. she said to hang up–and then she hung the phone on the hook–and wait a few seconds to try again.
ohhh my god. i know many, many people knew this before. but it just CLICKED for me. this is so freaking fascinating to watch, because it makes history visceral. i am seeing the actual Experience (as it was Presented and Marketed) they did.
how long are radio stations gonna say “80s, 90s, and today!” We’ve entered the third decade of “today”
I work at an oldies station. Every six months we sit down look around the table and someone goes “Y'know, we could start adding ‘90s to the mix. It’s within our format.” We all nod and no one plays anything produced after 1989 because time stopped here sometime around 2003, and no one wants to be the one responsible for whatever consequences come from breaking that fragile illusion.
not to be boring, but I’m boring
There’s a reason for that, and it’s Napster and iTunes. People could suddenly buy and listen to whatever music they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. Starting around 2003, we were no longer all forced by media conglomerates to listen to the same few songs anymore, endlessly repeated on the radio till we were sick of them.
So our taste scattered, in a way that I find really beautiful. The long tail was born. The rise of the indie musician began. The 1,000 true fans theory (briefly) become a possibility, and record labels lost their chokehold grip on both artists and listeners.
But! Also!
Collective nostalgia also froze at that point. After 2003, we only culturally shared the experience of a song or two a year, and often we did that for a reason external to the song itself – like a dance or a controversy or the rise of a new platform (“Gangnam Style,” “WAP,” “Old Town Road”). The songs that we have in common now, we no longer have in common because we are forced to listen to them four hundred times a month by record labels, radio stations, and MTV, but for other reasons. The advent of truly open personal choice in music was also the end of collective music culture.
Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this
“i wish i could do something 😔 / i wish the wga had a kickstarter or a gofundme, i would throw money at it” good news! it’s amazing how you can literally go onto the wga strike website or the wgawest linktree from their twitter and find links to support writers and other workers affected by the strike
