Jokes in movies and TV that technology has ruined.

[Yavin4]

Phonebooks are no longer a thing. So, this joke goes over everyone's head.

[robbob]

1. I feel like an idiot!

When I saw the word “phonebook” I immediately started picturing some kind of book you downloaded to your phone. I thought maybe it was some early predecessor to kindle or whatnot that never took off. Halfway through the clip I’m like, oh! THAT phone book... ☺️

And yes, I am old enough to know what a phone book is; got 5 of them sitting on top of my fridge...

[Yavin4]

2. Do they still publish phone books?

I thought that they stopped.

[underpants]

4. No they still do

A lot of older people still use them and the paper industry petitioned hard to keep them.

[robbob]

5. They do in small town Ontario; and deliver it to my door every year.

Even though rarely does anything change in it...

[Marthe48]

7. i get new ones every year

some times they come in handy. I have people on my Christmas card list but not their address.

Before you laugh, the people I send cards to are not computer savvy for whatever reason. I hope I can keep sending paper cards, support the p.o. I guess I could just buy stamps and hoard them

[underpants]

3. Not a joke but the entire ending of Silence of the Lambs

Clarice would just make a cell phone call now.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. Sometimes the absence of cell phones is huge in older movies.

A while back I read a novel written in the late 90s. It was a bit weird that no one in it seemed to have a cell phone, but what really stood out was that it apparently took place in an alternate universe in which answering machines had never been invented.

An excellent book by an amazing writer, The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis was published in 1992, and the main part of it takes place around 2050 or so. Even a few years later the fact that people are frantically running around trying to find pay phones to call each feels very off. In Willis's defense, she would have been writing just before people started getting cell phones. Had she written it a few years later it might have been very different. Although important things happen because people can't get hold of each other very easily.

[Marthe48]

8. I think a lot of tv shows are set in the past

because they don't have the technology. Plot twists like wrong numbers, getting trapped, needing help work better if the people don't have the technology we have now.

I have been seeing modern mysteries set in remote areas, where cell phone coverage is iffy. That works too.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. Yes, that's true.

[Marthe48]

9. A joke that is passe

Why didn't the nitwit like the dimmer switch on the steering column? Because his foot getting getting stuck in the steering wheel.



(I learned to drive on cars with the dimmer switch on the floor. When this joke was new, it was funny)