The ’90s called, they want their phones back.

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.

  • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
    4·
    10 months ago

    I don’t miss landlines. Can’t take the friggin landline with you wherever you go. (Affordable) Cell phones were the game changer.

    • SilverShark@beehaw.org
      3·
      10 months ago

      I feel like over the last 20 years landlines become this thing you still had from the past in which you only got spam calls. Like, you’re home, and suddenly you hear a strange noise, you realize it’s the landline ringing. You forgot about it. It’s that thing sitting on some shelves with a cord. You pick it up, and you hear something about your car’s extended warrenty.

    • Tinidril@midwest.socialEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      A few years ago when I was working from home and on the phone all day, I much preferred my landline. My cell service was decent, but the landline was better. No dropped calls, no static or garbled audio (from my side anyways), and no latency causing me to talk over other callers. I always hated getting on calls when I was remote from my home office.

      • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
        1·
        10 months ago

        It can make a difference for sure. I get good cell signal, even in my basement office, so it’s not as big of a factor for me. But I can see how that could suck.

    • Trafficone@slrpnk.net
      3·
      10 months ago

      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.