29. Before Reels and Ring Lights: Life Before Social Media

🎙️ Hot Flash Chronicles – Episode: Before Reels and Ring Lights: Life Before Social Media ☎️📺📱 From Dial-Up to Doomscrolling—How Technology Took Over Our Lives (And Made Us Hilarious)

In this laugh-out-loud and wildly relatable episode, Angie and Shelly take a stroll down memory lane—and scroll through how social media and technology have transformed literally everything. From calling friends on a rotary phone to doomscrolling recipes at 2 AM, they explore how we used to connect, survive, and socialize before everything fit into our back pocket.

📱 What You’ll Hear in This Episode:

📞 Life Before Texting – Remember calling someone’s house and hoping they were home? And the panic of missing them at the grocery store because you forgot the hot dog buns?

🗺️ MapQuest, Printed Directions & Getting Lost – Angie recalls driving around with a binder of printed maps. Miss a turn? Good luck.

📚 Encyclopedias & the Dewey Decimal System – When research meant hauling yourself to the library and hoping the info wasn’t 20 years out of date.

🧠 Has Tech Made Us Smarter or Just Scrollier? – They talk brain rest, Candy Crush, Kindle vs. books, and the lost art of actual human connection.

📲 How Tech Has Changed Relationships – From being “always available” to ghosting, client texts at midnight, and learning to Do Not Disturb your own life.

🎥 The Scroll Spiral – Why TikTok is both a time warp and a visual learning tool. (Yes, they now know how to grow sweet potatoes in a cup. Yes, it was worth it.)

👵 From Boomers to Bingers – How every platform has been taken over by “old people,” and why they’re okay with that. (Looking at you, TikTok.)

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💬 So tell us—what did YOU do before social media? Did you wait for reruns? Read cookbooks? Print out MapQuest? Drop a comment, share your favorite tech memory, and remember: if your grandma can go viral on TikTok, so can you.