Gen Xers just want to go back in time to before the internet existed

Not me. I’m an Xer and the kind of person who is searching for a HoloLens 1 on Ebay.

My son, born in 2002, is really a throwback. He refuses to use a cell phone of any kind, including a prepaid. (In an emergency you can almost always ask to use somebody else’s)

He plays an N64 attached to a CRT television that has a built-in VHS VCR.

He just got a job off the farm and needed a car, he couldn’t stand any car with a touchscreen or the roofline of a Toyota Prius, he wanted to drive down to North Carolina and get a Chrysler Fifth Avenue. I know quite a few rednecks who do that all the time and think nothing of it but it seemed like too much of an adventure. Instead I found a 1996 Buick Park Avenue an hour away and that’s what he drives now…. It’s a big car that gets 29 mpg on the highway and cost less than I could have spent on a Chevy Sonic with 180,000 miles.

It can be done without a time machine or pretty close to it. Get a TV antenna, channel scan and delete all channels except MeTV stations and a couple other classic stations. Cancel all social media, streaming services and no cell phone. Only a landline and always drive with a road atlas in the glove box. If you want to learn about something go to a library and check out books. Do all those things and well on your way.

You CAN unplug if you want.

True, it was better demarcated in the 90s, during the golden era of consumer modem-connected systems: you'd do your offline thing, then go to the PC, connect to your ISP, do that biz, then disconnect. But you can certainly emulate this with some personal discipline.

Just a gentle reminder: with modern phones, you can control who can call you at 3AM using sleep mode + exception lists. It's pretty darn close to unplugging without the slim danger of being completely impossible to reach.

That would make a great movie. "The Day Before Eternal September".