No Stupid Questions

idk why you have that feeling, but maybe it helps to remember all this info was available too, but it took longer to get it. for example, you got the news only via radio, tv and newspaper and had to keep track of time to watch it or go buy a newspaper with news from yesterday. you could get media from the library or shops, like record stores etc.. you could buy maps in certain places and there were usually public maps in towns. to message someone you had multiple options, for example telegraph them. many homes had compact encyclopedia describing most known things in short. if your home didn't have this, you could ask neighbours or check with schools or libraries.

maybe that feeling is projected impatience. maybe it's frustration with how slow and complicated things were.

What is this weird feeling that I’m feeling?

Appreciation, maybe? There were books before the internet, but I think it's no contest that the internet is the best resource for information that has ever existed. Pre-internet people didn't have FOMO because they didn't know what was coming.

FWIW I don't think it's weird at all to feel that way. I grew up when the internet became accessible to everyone, and I would not want to go back to before then despite the new problems it poses.

I'm around five to ten years older than you and get the same feeling sometimes. Not so much from TV shows or movies, but also from reading or watching real-life stories from that time. Like, when reading documents written pre-Internet that reference then-current events, how and how much did they know about those events? All just TV and newspapers? Nowadays I can easily find out what happened back then, but that was obviously not so much so at the time.

I do not remember a time without the Internet at all, but I do remember very well a time before mobile Internet, and I remember that around the time you were born, most people watched TV almost every day. I hardly ever watch TV nowadays, there is so much more entertainment online (e.g. YouTube).

As for looking up information, in the mid-to-late 2000s it was really mostly Wikipedia that built up the Internet as a useful resource for doing that. Obviously nowadays nearly all information that can be found there can be found on numerous other websites too; the Internet has now been built up, so Wikipedia is arguably a much less important website now than back then...

You're recognizing the problems of today. Someone in the 1930's Depression would feel something similar watching a movie set in the Jazz Age.

are you living the present? isn't now peak weird?

As a BBS era kid, I know you’re not trying to simulate the whole thing right now in the comments section. I’d say: you would have done fine, in any era. People talk, they share methods, and you would’ve picked up whatever you needed.

I think it’s just a common sort of nightmare, worrying about being unprepared, dealing with the consequences of lack of preparation.

I recommend the first few minutes of Jason Scott’s The BBS Documentary, for an overview of how people communicated in the pre-internet days. Especially if you imagine yourself a telegraph operator chatting with neighboring stations in the 19th century or something.

i lived my early childhood at 90s and i kind of have same. Though i also have it about 80s or almost any decade before this current shitshow.

Have you ever been anywhere without an always-on internet connection? You sound like you have a serious addiction.