I am curious, are the kids actually doing this? Is everything you described here literally happening? If so, is there a search term for what they’re doing? And what scene is this happening in?
Some are. I have observed n=1 teenagers saying this is a thing. It's definitely not the majority. Of course, if avant garde movements were the majority then they wouldn't be avant garde. All I know for certain is that there exists at least one 18-year-old who, along with some other people on the Internet and IRL, expouses the virtues of 90s technology and chooses to use some of it. This post is my dramatic interpretation. The characters in my story are all fictional.
The search terms you're looking for are "retro tech" and "retro gaming".
It's from the recent book "There is no antimemetics division" by Sam Hughes. (An earlier version of the story can be read for free and I think it's actually better than the book version.) In short, U-3125 (or SCP-3125 in the original story) is a kind of abstract monster that exists everywhere and wants to eat the world.
Oh, LLMs also suggested SCP-3125, but I thought they were wrong because "U" didn't seem like a plausible typo for "SCP". I wasn't aware of the alternate U-3125 naming.
For what it matters, I still use an MP3 player. I've had people look at it a bit bemused. It's still the most useful way of listening to music I can imagine. Super simple, doesn't stop working when my train is inside a tunnel, and isn't as desperately battery-hungry as my phone (which I generally need charged for more useful reasons anyway). That's an obvious case of a piece of tech that was really convenient and useful and only got phased out because it was a pain from the seller's side to support (it would have been easy if anyone had said "fuck it" and started selling DRM-free music but of course can't do that, what if you copied it).
If Spotify on a smartphone was any less convenient than a player from 2006 hand-loaded with MP3? You'd actually see a lot of people rocking MP3 players instead of subscribing to Spotify.
If you truly want "big tech" to lose its grip, don't prostrate yourself and hope that you are able to find an odd sucker who'd buy into a contrarian ideology. Build something that makes a better offer.
I have more respect for the profiteers offering pirate TV boxes than I do for most of the "big tech bad" crowd. Those, at the very least, have a meaningful threat on offer. They force big media companies to mind their step - because every step they take away from serving their users well is giving those pirates an advantage.
You were born in 2007. From your perspective, the Internet has always existed. Facebook has always existed. Google has always existed. Smartphones have always existed.
By the time you became old enough to use social media, social media had already evolved from "nominally social" to "superintelligent hostile optimization system working tirelessly to grab your attention and mind control you via brainrot, ragebait, and parasocial relationships". By the time you were old enough to drive, all new cars had annoying touchscreen interfaces designed as if their purpose was to distract you and crash the car. Screens don't even advance. There's no point in building a display with higher resolution than a retina display. Instead, the Corporate Overlords managing the software arbitrarily change up the user interfaces of your software just as soon as you start to like the old interface.
The blogosphere is unheard of, by which I mean you have literally never heard of it. You don't know what a blog is or how they work. "Media" means YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok. Hosting your own website is unheard of too. You don't know that the first webcomic artists managed their own physical servers (or even what a real server is). Everything is in the cloud, after all, and the technical minutae will be handled by AI soon. You do everything through a screen. You live in a reality where The Matrix is a fantastical world full of scifi technology because the characters use landlines.
And the worst part of it all is you can't escape. Electronic technology isn't optional. It is a necessity to work, study, buy products, and communicate with friends. Electronics are more fundamental to reality than fire. When's the last time you saw an open flame (gas stoves don't count)? Maybe this year, if you're lucky and your parents let you outside. When's the last time you looked at a digital screen? You're looking at one right now.
You know the world isn't supposed to be like this. Technology is supposed to serve people. It's not supposed to be an enemy. It's not supposed to pretend to be your friend. It's not supposed to control you. It's supposed to be a tool. You're supposed to control it. And if it does try to control you, then you should be able to destroy it with a sledgehammer, because it should be your property.
You live in a fallen world. Once, in the ancient past, there was a time when technology was pure. There was a time when phones were real phones, ebooks were real ebooks, and "buying a videogame" really meant buying a videogame. You know this was real, because the residue of the Age of Chrome is all around you. You can find it old movie clips on YouTube, and in the electronics section of Goodwill.
That time…was the 1990s.
Retro Tech
It's December 21, 2020. You're 13 and the COVID lockdown is starting to be lifted. Christmas is coming soon. The Corporate Overlords are telling you you're supposed to want Apple's new $1,000 iPhone. Your phone is your most essential possession, but you don't have any interest in the newest soul-sucking rectangle. The new iPhone is technologically identical to the old iPhone your mom gave you when she upgraded hers. It's not that you don't want a good phone. You do. But everything the Corporate Overlords are trying to sell you is superficial parasitic evil.
It's December 22, 2020. You're hanging out with your friend at the park (because outdoors air reduces COVID infection risk). She shows you this thing she found. She doesn't tell you what it is or what it's for. It's nicked and scratched with age, but it's still the most beautiful tool you've ever seen. It doesn't even look like mortal engineers made it. It looks like the kind of thing angels would wield. And when you hold it in your hand and feel the contours and temperature of the case you can tell it is pure the way low-background steel is pure. It was created in an age before the corruption of technology.
You wonder what it would be like to use the thing. But you know how technology works. The Corporate Overlords are always meddling where they shouldn't. Firmware updates brick old devices. Proprietary web APIs have a half-life.
You turn it over and gaze at its tiny screen. Then you notice the buttons below its smartwatch-sized screen. Buttons! This isn't a touch screen. The artifact has real buttons like airplanes, and limousines, and Apollo spacecraft. When you press them they have a satisfying click.
Then the screen turns on.
On the screen are a list of options. You click on "Music". The tactile satisfaction is like the fidget toy you use to relieve stress at home. Except the buttons on your fidget toy aren't connected to anything. These buttons are REAL. The artifact displays a list of songs. This shouldn't be possible. To get a list of songs, your phone needs an Internet connection. But this device is too old and too small to have a cellular data connection. Even more mysteriously, the list of songs appears instantly. This artifact is so ridiculously OP it uses an FTL data transfer protocol to save you a fraction of a second when you're looking at your music collection.
"Where are the speakers?" you ask.
"It doesn't have any," your friend says.
Your friend pulls from her pocket a pair of wired headphones. The kind you use in airplanes. Except these ones aren't single-use. They have soft earpads and the headband is shiny chrome. You put them on and listen to music. The experience is…perfect. It's the most peaceful experience of listening to music you've ever had in your life. You wonder why. The audio quality is no better than the headphones you use at home.
Then you realize what's missing. There are no popups. There are no advertisements. There are no YouTube thumbnails. There is no unnecessary news feed. The is no "Like", "❤️", "Follow", or "Subscribe" buttons. There is no subscription fee. There is no premium version. There are no microtransactions. There is no App Store. There is no red dot in the corner informing you of unread advertisements. There are no notifications at all. The artifact doesn't even know what your name is.
"How much did this cost?" you ask.
"It's been collecting dust in my uncle's closet for years," your friend says, "He was going to throw it away."
Technological Responsibility
Your parents think it's a game, like Minecraft, or a…whatever 67 is. But it's not. It's maturity.
A child is responsible for the tasks they are assigned. An adult is someone who takes responsibility voluntarily. Technology is your world. Taking responsibility for your technology is taking responsibility for the world.
Corporate Overlords control the algorithms, the algorithms control the media, the media controls politics, politics controls the government, and the government controls everything. The schools, which should be protecting you from this insanity, instead force you to stare at a screen for hours everyday. You yearn for the mines because they, at least, were real and physical and mattered.
You want to rebel. But rebelling against a globalized techno-political-memeplex is like rebelling against U-3125. You can't take to the streets and burn down the Internet. Rage just feeds the Rage Machine. For too long you tacitly assumed that resistance was futile. Rebelling against technology is like rebelling against fire. But the artifact in your hand is physical proof that there is a better way. Fire can be wielded. It just needs the right container.
The Millennials let the fire burn out of control. By the time they noticed the First AI War had started, they had already lost. AI now controls civilization. It is Gen-Z's job to take it back. The best defense against digital attack is a physical airgap. You must build a fortress cleanroom. You must carve out a beachhead where the AI can't get your attention. You must construct a reverse AI Box.
To do this you subscribe to a singular ideology: Every digital device has a single purpose. For the most part, this means using tools considered obsolete by the Corporate Overlords. Your camera is a digital camera. A digicam. Nothing more, nothing less. Your music player is a Walkman. (It never crosses your mind that putting music on casette tapes might be illegal. It wouldn't stop you if it did.) You read ebooks a Kindle with round buttons for each letter of the alphabet. You tell time from your 4-button Ironman Timex. It's indestructable and its battery lasts for 5 years. You play Minecraft 1.8. Your friend buys a Wii, and then a GameCube. Someday you plan to buy an N64 together, but that's outside of your price range for now.
Your friend carries an iPhone 5s. It runs older builds of Instagram and Facebook that support messaging but don't support video. She pairs it with Bluetooth airpods and a Bluetooth corded phone. Other classmates accomplish a similar result with tiny Android phones.
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