The Inner Monologue

Let’s get one thing straight: retro fascination is stupid. It has always been stupid. And yet, here we are—dozens of grown adults hunched over Commodore 64s, soldering ancient circuit boards, and pretending that floppy disks weren’t the most infuriating storage medium ever conceived.

The Eternal Cycle of Nostalgia for Things You Never Experienced

Picture this: It’s 1975. Some cool dude in a leather jacket is cruising around in a meticulously restored ’57 Chevy. Meanwhile, some grumpy old mechanic is standing in the corner, muttering, “Why the hell would anyone want that piece of junk when you could have a brand-new Charger?”

Fast forward to today. That same mechanic is now the old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn, while a 30-something hipster in a vintage Atari t-shirt waxes poetic about the warm, authentic sound of a cassette tape. Newsflash: Cassettes sucked. They always sucked. You just like them because you weren’t there when they were the only option.

The Golden Rule of Vintage Fetishism

“Modern technology is anything invented in your lifetime. Everything else is either obsolete or magic.”

This explains why people born in the 2000s are now obsessed with Windows 98, CRT monitors, and rotary phones. To them, this stuff is ancient wizardry. Meanwhile, those of us who actually suffered through dial-up internet and 8-bit graphics are baffled. Why would you willingly subject yourself to this?

The Rise of the Retro Hobbyist

Thanks to the internet, every forgotten piece of tech now has a cult following. There are people out there farming with 1970s tractors because “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” (No, they don’t—they make them better.) There are people building furniture with hand tools because Norm Abram told them to. There are people running entire businesses on Apple IIs just to prove they can.

Is any of this practical? No. Is it objectively worse than modern alternatives? Absolutely. But here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter.

Stupid, But Fun

At the end of the day, vintage fetishism isn’t about efficiency. It’s about romance. It’s about the thrill of coaxing life out of something that was designed to die decades ago. It’s about the absurd joy of doing something the hard way just because you can.

So go ahead. Fire up that Pentium II. Rewind that VHS. Crank that hand-cranked grain mill. It’s dumb, but so is everything else we care about.

And in 20 years, some kid will be doing the same thing with an iPhone 12. The cycle continues.