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Six technological innovations teenagers think of as old people shit

TECHNOLOGY evolves so fast that even recent innovations look ancient. And as far as Zoomers are concerned, these belong strictly to pensioners.

CDs and DVDs

Back in the day CDs and DVDs were the stuff of space-age wet dreams. Clunky, whirring tapes that always got tangled up were out, and in their place were shiny discs that were read by laser beams. It doesn’t get more advanced than that. Although any teenager will find it hilariously primitive that they can only store one measly album or movie, and not the entirety of human creative output like their phone.

Satellite dishes

Satellite dishes turned humble UK houses into Jodrell Bank, and gave people access to hundreds of TV channels they would ignore on their way to the porn section. Thanks to high-speed internet though, satellite dishes now look as archaic as a clothes mangle or a steam engine. Give it a few years though and they’ll come back via a wave of Nineties nostalgia.

Digital cameras

Remember the giddy thrill of taking a picture on your digital camera for the first time then looking at it straight away? Ungrateful Gen Z teens don’t. They’ve grown up with this incredible innovation as standard on their phones, and they’ve wasted it on recording banal TikTok dances. The more pretentious youngsters are deliberately going back to the old ways of film, which is just as annoying in a different way.

Game Boys

Portable cartridge-based gaming is still an incredibly recent development in terms of human history, but teens look at Game Boys in the same way you look at an abacus. Try as you might to explain the thrill of squinting at green LCD graphics on a device powered by four AA batteries, the Game Boy simply can’t compete with the Nintendo Switch, which itself is becoming antiquated.

Beepers and pagers

Before text messages – which are also woefully old-fashioned – people sent brief, instant communications on beepers and pagers. They were a game changer at the time, especially for doctors in medical dramas who needed to get out of a sexually-charged confrontation with a dissatisfied love interest, but today’s youngsters wouldn’t even know how to hold them in their modern hands. The supposedly tech-savvy idiots.

WhatsApp

Message a teenager on WhatsApp and you might as well have tried speaking to them in person because you will not receive a reply. Everyone under 20 uses Snapchat, Instagram or BeReal. Teenagers rightly believe WhatsApp is only for old duffers discussing their evening meals, bad backs and why they have had to cancel going out. It’s okay though, Gen Alpha will supersede these smug young f**ks soon enough.

Six kids' TV themes that would absolutely go the f**k off in the club

NIGHTCLUBS do not tend to play theme tunes from kids’ TV shows, but if they did these would raise the roof.

Thunderbirds

Everyone’s seen Thunderbirds, everyone loves Thunderbirds. But its theme tune is so good that it doesn’t even need to be carried by nostalgia. If the DJ cranked this one up the whole place would be on its feet drunkenly chanting along to the music. The Busted cover is pretty sick too, mainly because it steals the melody wholesale. Hard to go wrong when the source material is this amazing.

Grange Hill

The classic one from the Seventies, obviously. Its scritchy, funky beat can’t be topped, and its rhythm is slow enough that even dad dancers can get involved. You’d inevitably have a club bore trying to tell you that the song’s actually called Chicken Man and it was also used as the theme tune for Give Us A Clue, but hopefully the speakers would drown them out.

Bucky O’Hare

A banger from the days of Nineties cartoons that would explain their plot at length in the theme tune. And just like every other animation from back then that was effectively a toy advert, it comes at you with breakneck energy that would set the club bouncing. No mean feat considering it’s about the fight against a regime of fascist toads led by an evil supercomputer.

Byker Grove

The classic BBC coming-of-age series about a Newcastle youth centre had a suitably edgy theme tune that sounded like it came right out of the Acid House movement. Sure, it barely runs to 30 seconds, but you could easily loop it for five minutes and chuck on some reverb before anyone got bored. They’ll likely be too high to care anyway.

Fireman Sam

Perhaps not as beloved as Postman Pat, but you can’t exactly rave to his sleepy theme tune. Fireman Sam on the other hand doesn’t let up with the sirens and electric guitar. Seriously, there’s an extended version on YouTube and the solo is a masterpiece to behold. It’s baffling that the likes of Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg haven’t sampled it yet for an easy hit.

Round the Twist

The Mr Brightside of kids’ TV show themes. Put this one on and every Nineties kid will go mental as their eyes glaze over and they start to recite the lyrics without even being aware of what they’re doing. The words are embedded deep in their brains like a race memory, and for good reason. The song f**king slaps.

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