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Saturday, February 2, 2008

The real 2011 list

The 2011 Mindset List is boring. Here’s the real list of “things that make me feel old” about the freshmen entering college this year.1

  1. [$5700 in $100 bills] $5700 © Andrew Magill / CC

    Computers have always come with operating systems, and OS upgrades have always cost money (except the ones that didn’t).

  2. [Mac 512K closeup] Old School © Guillermo Esteves / CC

    An “Apple computer” has always meant a “Macintosh computer”.

  3. [3.5-inch floppy disc] Floppy © Rudolf Ammann / CC

    Apple computers have always had USB ports and never had floppy drives.

  4. [Vibrators on a platter] hors d’vours © tox brown / CC

    Vibrators have always been mainstream.

  5. [Spindle of blank CDs] Compact Disks © Indi Samarajiva / CC

    CDs have always been copyable. DVDs have always been copyable. The phrase “Don’t Copy That Floppy” has never been more than a historical curiosity.

  6. [Blue Screen of Death] BSOD 0×07B © Justin Marty / CC

    Windows has always supported long filenames and pre-emptive multitasking.

  7. [Web browser screenshot] Sidewinder showing the W3C Homepage © Mark Birbeck / CC

    They’ve never paid for a web browser, because computers have always come with one pre-installed.

  8. [Masked man] Crime generally punishes itself © Chandan Nandrajog / CC

    Microsoft has always been a monopoly.

  9. [Donald Rumsfeld] IMG_8072 © dbking / CC

    Porn has always been easier to find than to avoid.2

  10. [Dildo in glass case (no really)] Royal Copenhagen © richkidsunite / CC

    Dildos have always been made of silicone.

  11. [discarded television] Untitled © Holly / CC

    They’ve always learned about drugs from television ads.

  12. [pile of multicolored pills] pills © Rodrigo Senna / CC

    The easiest way to “turn on, tune in, and drop out” has always been with a prescription.

  13. [Napster logo on wall] l33t from the str33t © KateMonkey / CC

    They’ve never had to pay for music.

  14. [Empty contraceptives package] All the contraceptive pills are gone… © Gnarls Monkey / CC

    Anal sex has always been an acceptable form of birth control.

  1. Taking some liberties and assuming that the recorded life begins at age 8 or so. ↺
  2. This, more than anything else on the list, makes me feel old. ↺

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14 comments

  1. Gosh! That list makes me feel old, too, and that may be the first time I have experienced that feeling.

    Comment by Scott Johnson — Saturday, February 2, 2008 @ 2:29 am

  2. Okay, so I actually go the school who makes that list every year, and I gots a story! My roommate was interviewed for MSNBC’s article on the thing:

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20378451/

    And was quoted as such:

    “I actually visited the Berlin Wall with my parents when I was in fifth grade. I didn’t know a lot about the history, but I think it was a great piece of architecture.”

    Of course, the Berlin Wall was gone by the time he was fifth grade, he was really talking about something else, or at least meant something else and said Berlin Wall. Anyway, a few weeks later he gets a letter without a return address with what he said underlined and a sticky note attached with a note, “You truly are an ignorant asshole. Hope you learn something in the next four years.”

    So yea, I can’t read these lists without remembering why I can’t trust anyone over thirty :)

    Comment by Brian — Saturday, February 2, 2008 @ 6:41 am

  3. re: #9 … Seriously, man.

    I remember when my friend Jason somehow managed to rent a “Playboy’s Wet and Wild” video (after a half-dozen unsuccessful tries).

    I felt like he deserved a medal or something.

    But these days, stuff that puts Playboy to shame ends up in adolescents’ “junk” email folder.

    Damn it. When *I* was a teenager, we couldn’t take our porn for granted!

    Comment by Joe Grossberg — Saturday, February 2, 2008 @ 9:50 am

  4. Let’s face it, I’m old, very old :) It seems like the time of 8-character filenames, floppy drives and no cd recorders. Well, I’m sentimental reading such lists, but surely I don’t miss these times. IT Life was much more confusing back then.

    Comment by Gabriel Fraser — Saturday, February 2, 2008 @ 2:17 pm

  5. Hey now—I was born in 1989 and I dealt with Macs with floppy drives straight through middle school. (Or would that be “junior high school” to you old(er than me) folks?)

    Comment by Tom Most — Saturday, February 2, 2008 @ 2:43 pm

  6. Of course, Linux isn’t and never was a free operating system, it’s an operating system kernel. You should know better Mark.

    The first free operating system was GNU, way back in 1983:

    http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html

    Comment by Noah Slater — Saturday, February 2, 2008 @ 6:42 pm

  7. Mark Pilgrim’s site has always rejected links from scripting.com

    Comment by Lenny Krapinski — Saturday, February 2, 2008 @ 8:36 pm

  8. No Apple II+, No Apple IIc, No Apple II GS? It is a sad world.

    Comment by Ken — Sunday, February 3, 2008 @ 12:46 am

  9. Thanks a bunch, pal. Now I feel old as well, and I was born in ‘86.

    Comment by Jake — Sunday, February 3, 2008 @ 11:20 am

  10. Hm. I wonder if knowing the first thing about computing machinery still irreversibly marks one as an unredeemable dork, subject to cruel, cruel wedgies until one finally leaves the era of compulsory schooling. It’d be nice if it didn’t.

    (Bitter? Never.)

    It’s too bad there’s no short and snappy way to say that there’s always been a place where adolescent kids could go and, if they acted like adults, they’d be treated as adults, a place where they’d be evaluated solely on the quality of their contributions, rather than kept in a nonfunctional model of the real world for nearly two decades straight.

    Comment by grendelkhan — Sunday, February 3, 2008 @ 2:28 pm

  11. Mark Pilgrim’s site has always rejected links from scripting.com

    … we have always been at war with Oceania?

    Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis — Sunday, February 3, 2008 @ 2:35 pm

  12. Oh, and re comment number 2, several stretches of the Berlin Wall survived reunification and were preserved as national monuments.

    Comment by Jake — Sunday, February 3, 2008 @ 11:28 pm

  13. Thanks. I found this on my birthday (today) and wasn’t feeling old enough already ;-)

    Incidently I was born in 1965, the year after Jack Weinberger was first reported to have said “never trust anyone over 30″, and years before Jerry Rubin is credited for saying the same thing. Of course, I have to agree.

    Comment by Dethe Elza — Monday, February 4, 2008 @ 5:19 pm

  14. From a different perspective, your father and I were issued Ration Stamps when we were born because the country was in a declared war. Times have changed.

    Comment by Jim Deming — Wednesday, February 20, 2008 @ 9:56 am

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