What's your 'old person' trait?
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Most of my friends don’t even have my phone number, let alone a messaging service. We do postal mail or just go to each other’s houses. I mail out about twenty letters a week and get that much back, on nice stationery.
It’s good to feel loved.
Dude or dudess, if true, f*cking awesome. And i envy you
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For example, mine is that I love watching Antiques Roadshow.
I refuse to use TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. I only have Facebook because 90% of my friends and family are there and it's the primary way I stay in touch with them, but I'd like to get rid of that too.
Regarding TikTok, I was serving in the US military as an IT sysadmin when it became popular. But we discovered that the app embedded itself deep in your phone's hardware, granted itself full administrative access to your phone, then started trickling all your data to servers in China. And you couldn't fully uninstall it once you'd installed it once. Your phone was completely compromised if you ever installed that app.
It became a huge security risk and we were told to never use it. It was a horrifyingly effective spy tool China could use to easily collect data on us. That's why President Biden pushed to ban TikTok in the US.
But of course, TikTok became super popular among our civilian population and they refused to give it up, which led to a lot of pushback against the ban. It never held, and now people are still using it and sharing all their private information with China.
Meta does something similar with Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp, but we at least can keep tabs on what they're doing with your private data, since they're an American company. They mostly use your information to build advertising profiles on you, to better catch your attention with ads. But that information could easily be used against you if federal organizations wanted to. ICE could use it to identify non-white Americans and their daily habits and easily intercept them.
Still, if you don't want your private information being potentially stolen by these companies, it's best to dump these programs. I don't install them on my phone or tablet and I keep Facebook's website isolated on my computer, since it likes to read other open windows and use those sites to fine-tune advertising data for you.
Google has turned into one of these companies that collects data on everything you do, so I'm in the middle of de-Googling my life right now. But it's really hard because they're embedded everywhere.
We're living in a dark time where the only way to prevent corporations and governments from collecting information on you is to stay offline. Which is nearly impossible nowadays. We don't get privacy in this modern Information Age. Not while Capitalism is still a thing.
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I'd usually agree with this but SMS is pretty insecure, so I mainly use Signal instead for the end-to-end encryption in a responsible manner (no leaking war plans like a certain SecDef).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/02/trump-immigration-ice-israeli-spyware
Do we really think ICE are the only ones? This also made me wonder if this is why DoD was using an unofficial version.
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Most of my friends don’t even have my phone number, let alone a messaging service. We do postal mail or just go to each other’s houses. I mail out about twenty letters a week and get that much back, on nice stationery.
It’s good to feel loved.
Postage stamps, in this economy?
Joke aside I think that's pretty cool.
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I upgraded from a normal electric range to an induction range... OMG the difference!
That requires new cookware?
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The streak of white in my beard?
The fact that 75% of my media consumption is things I've already seen before?
I can maintain eye contact in a conversation and at no point do I want to fuck/fight the other person nor do I believe they want to fuck/fight me?
I can maintain friendships with people who do not share all of my views on things, with a select view even having opposing views?
Comfort wins over style every time, with zero exceptions?
I'm turning 50 soon, and almost all of this hits close to home. Almost all. My media consumption is as it's always been: new books all the time. But also no TV, and I know all about a given movie from reading a few reviews, not actually watching it.
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For example, mine is that I love watching Antiques Roadshow.
My biggest decision of the day is usually whether I get to have alcohol or pain meds that day. Pain meds usually win.
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For example, mine is that I love watching Antiques Roadshow.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I most likely haven't seen over 1 hour of TikTok IN MY LIFETIME. And believe me, this is certainly not common in my age range.
I would have everything backed up in USB pens if I could, and I despise anything that markets as “AI” — I am aware it reduces critical thinking, something which I somewhat lack. I do not listen to music from nowadays (2020s on), only 1960s to mid-2010s music.Furthermore, I do watch some old shows, e.g., Perry Mason.
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For example, mine is that I love watching Antiques Roadshow.
I've started noticing birds, and worse, I've started recognizing them.
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Most of my friends don’t even have my phone number, let alone a messaging service. We do postal mail or just go to each other’s houses. I mail out about twenty letters a week and get that much back, on nice stationery.
It’s good to feel loved.
Last time I ever wrote letters was while I was in the service. Kept every single letter.
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Dude or dudess, if true, f*cking awesome. And i envy you
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing the same thing.
Make a friend’s day, give them mail that’s not bills or ads or packages.
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Postage stamps, in this economy?
Joke aside I think that's pretty cool.
Postage is expensive, but I look forward to checking my mail. Mixed in with the ads is real human sentiment!
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Last time I ever wrote letters was while I was in the service. Kept every single letter.
Paper mail is so underrated.
I need to get a wax sealing kit.
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I've started noticing birds, and worse, I've started recognizing them.
If you haven't tried Cornell's "Merlin" app, I highly recommend it.
Bird watching is peaceful. I love it.
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For example, mine is that I love watching Antiques Roadshow.
The noises I make when I sit down and stand up lol
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If you can stick a magnet to your current cookware, no.
Mine is all cast iron so I'm good, but aluminum or copper pans won't work.
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For example, mine is that I love watching Antiques Roadshow.
I always get printed boarding passes for domestic flights.
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I've started noticing birds, and worse, I've started recognizing them.
I volunteered over the summer to track birds at a plot of local conservation land. Went out there at the crack of dawn with binoculars and everything. That's when I knew I was really getting old.
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If you can stick a magnet to your current cookware, no.
Mine is all cast iron so I'm good, but aluminum or copper pans won't work.
Well I have cast iron, stainless, and glass, so...
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For example, mine is that I love watching Antiques Roadshow.
I cannot correctly say my kids' names when I'm stressed out in a hurry. I just end up saying both of their names. Eventually I will be right.
