So for the longest time, I had a fascination with 80s and 90s technology and I still do. I grew up in the 2000s and my parents still had a bunch of 90s tech in the house so I was a little more exposed to that era than some of my peers. I’m not saying I know everything about late 1900s gadgets and toys but I do love them dearly. I also watched a lot of Regular Show which had a strong emphasis on stuff like cassettes and VHSes so that definitely helped develop my interest in that era.
Flashforward to today where my PC setup is very much inspired by the cassette futurism aesthetic. In case you don’t know what that is, cassette futurism is basically just cyberpunk mixed with the 1980s. Things like the Alien franchise (at least the first few movies) take place in the future but they still rely on blocky computers with CRT monitors which I absolutely adore. Because of my love for the genre and aesthetic, my setup somewhat embodies it. I have a mechanical keyboard that is styled to look like one straight out of my grandmother’s basement and so is the mouse that accompanies it. I’m currently looking for a monitor that would match the theme of older tech but there’s a lot of issues with that. If I got an old school monitor, it wouldn’t be compatible with my PC since the latter requires an HDMI cord to hook up to a secondary display. I also really don’t have the room on my desk for something quite that large as well as the glaring issues of the low quality display and limited settings. In light of all that, I might just have to stick with my 2020 HP monitor.
The last thing I wanted to talk about in this post was cassettes. I have always loved cassettes and physical media in general since that’s what I grew up learning about. I didn’t grow up with that medium exactly but they were the precursor to CDs which I also love very much (saving that for a different post). I have quite a few tapes however most of them are country and jazz which I’m not always in the mood for but I do enjoy those genres a lot. I do have a few vaporwave tapes I love listening to that I bought at a music shop near my old apartment. I also got a walkman off Amazon so I could listen to them without having to use my old radio that I got at a garage sale. On top of all that, I recently got a bluetooth transmitter that I can hook up to non-bluetooth devices and use them with my wireless headphones. So now I have a bluetooth cassette player which I think is the coolest thing in the world.
Thanks for reading!