cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/10105454
• Gen Z’s nostalgia for the early 2000s is sparking a revival of landline phones, seen as a retro-chic escape from the digital age.
• Influenced by '90s and 2000s TV shows, young adults like Nicole Randone and Sam Casper embrace landlines for their vintage appeal.
• Urban Outfitters capitalizes on Gen Z’s love for nostalgia by selling retro items like landline phones alongside fashion trends from the '90s and 2000s.
3 points
One thing people forget is long distance fees. Cell phones basically did away with long distance fees, and we’re better for that. However, landlines have some notable benefits:
- self-powered, you could call in a power outage
- high fidelity, yeah it was bandpass filtered, but everything in that filter made it through
- freedom of usage, it was hard-fought but you could plug anything into your phone line, from more phones to answering machines to computer modems. There was a whole market around “dumb shit you plugged into your phone line” products
We’re still way better overall with cell phones, but something was lost to get them.
