To feel like I wouldn’t be that bothered if the internet disappeared?

I happily kiss goodbye to shopping online, social media and streaming. I get cds, dvds and books from charity shops, read magazines and papers in the library and generally try to 'switch off' as much as possible which makes an enormous difference to my MH. I have an old fashioned radio that must be over 30 years old, for the news etc.

I try to pay with cash as much as possible but would panic without online banking as I'm appointee for a close relative and do all my own and their finances. Work would be harder, but not impossible.

I've been left with a disability since having cancer that has been enormously helped by finding a community online, so I'd feel quite isolated if that was suddenly taken away.

I agree. Once we got over the initial 'hump' (which would be horrendous and maybe result in all out civil war, famine, endemic violence, etc) BUT if we magically got over the hump, then I do think the world would be a better place. Supply chains would shorten, local towns would be booming again, pubs would reopen, food would be grown locally, community spaces would be valued, youth clubs would start up again, mental health issues would reduce, we would save a fuck ton of carbon, and possibly possibly have a chance of mitigating the worst of climate change, as well as being well rid of the insidious nature of AI and the cess-pit that the internet has now become.

However it's a complete pipe dream.

I do agree that still charging a 'booking fee' for selecting, paying by card and downloading your own e-tickets, without a human ever involved in it, is basically legalised robbery.

Even in the old days with box offices, it was a rip-off charging a 'booking fee' to people who turned up to buy tickets in person. Fair enough if you bought them over the phone and they had to post them to you, and they charged the actual cost of the envelope and postage.

If you cannot buy something without a fee being added, then it isn't actually a 'fee' as such; it's purely dishonestly and deliberately misrepresented prices, of the kind that Trading Standards should otherwise have clamped right down on - and legally banned persistent offenders from trading.

I for one am so sick of having to prepare to receive something that I ordered with virtually no notice at all - even being lumped with it later the same day, as though the seller can't actually wait to get rid of it!

I yearn for the good old days when you could see an advert in a magazine or paper - often offering as many as a dozen different product options - fill in the order coupon and find your scissors to cut it out, pop down to the post office to buy a postal order, find an envelope, write the address and add a stamp or two, put it in the post box and then rest reassured that you would have up to 28 days to clear a space in your home for it and mentally prepare for ownership of the exciting new item(s).

There were agents in most towns and villages. It could be the
local shop. You bought the tickets and paid them a booking fee.

Now you often get charged a booking fee even if you book yourself direct with the venue and online.

The world as we know it would stop. Yes, of course many of the old ways of doing things would eventually be recoverable and could be re-established; but it would take a long time - and it would seem alien enough to those of us who are old enough to remember life pre-internet; let alone to the youngsters who have never known any different.

Even schools are realising that demonising and banning phones full-stop - rather than teaching, guiding and disciplining wise, responsible use - means that they have to return to less efficient more time-consuming paper-based methods for organising, communicating and scheduling the days for their pupils. Hundreds of children and teachers can now spend their time 'simply' filling in their static planner books with the same details that one central person could previously have put on an app, and kept regularly updated and at-hand for everybody.

There has never been any kind of actual law or ruling that banned them from using the old-fashioned methods; they just made the free choice to move to something much better and more efficient, and this brought a lot of benefits whilst it lasted.

What has the lack of landline phones have to do with no internet?

It's not what it used to be. It was fun when it started off. Now it's just corporate slop, ai slop and algorithms designed to extract money from people.

You'd probably be bothered when you turned up at Tesco for your weekly shop to find the shelves empty because no deliveries had been arranged, or when your power went off because the utility company couldn't tell whether you'd paid your bill.

It is embedded in all of global infrastructure. We can't turn it off and go back to how things were done in the early 90's because the infrastructure to do that no longer exists.

Besides which it is not actually possible.

Well major problems with banking given there's virtually no street banks left, bus and train timetables, barely any at stations and stops these days, barely any businesses have anyone on the end of the line any more even bloody restaurants won't take bookings over the phone got to book online, apps for parking because they don't take cards or money, the list is endless OP, although I slightly share the sentiment

Governments of ALL varieties (and absolutely not just those from 'infamous' communist countries) used to routinely get away with so much nefarious stuff before the internet existed, whereby the great unwashed suddenly had a means to actually find them out, call them out on it and spread the word across their own nation and the whole globe about what was going on.

Our lives are so hectic now with busy careers, children etc - we don’t generally have mum at home anymore to go out to the shops to buy everything in person.

Grocery deliveries predate the internet - look at The Tiger Who Came To Tea!

Can’t recall exactly with concert tickets, think you used to ring a phone number and tickets came in the post or you collected from the box office. - or you could buy them at local record shops or whatever - I got my Glasto tickets from Andy's Records.

It's amazing how many people seem to think the world just would stop functioning due to something that only came in 30 years ago. Of course some things would be much more difficult, and it would make my life harder to have to commute to London every day for example. On the other hand lots of jobs would reappear - printers, local papers, magazines, the Post Office etc. I think PPs underestimate how quickly things/ businesses spring up to meet a need.

It always baffles me with these threads - when people actively choose to spend their leisure time voluntarily coming on to the internet to start or participate in threads about how they hate the internet and wish it didn't exist!!

I love the internet.
I was late to get it - avoided it out of some vague superiority complex I think 😂
Got the internet and it changed my life for the better.
Before I was quite isolated and lonely. Avoided certain situations that needed to be face to face.
The internet opened my world.... literally.
If you don't like it - don't use it (except for work if required).

Great OP
What if you live in a country where all news a censored by the government?
I bet you have no clue.

I often fantasise about going back to an internet free existence. I watched a guy on YouTube spend a fortune on lots of tech to live as though it were the 80s. He had a TV and video player, a mega old games console, Walkman and landline. It looked really cool and because I’ve had a mobile since I was ten and smart phone since 14, I barely remember life without it.

I think it would be difficult to reverse the hold tech has over all of us and would take years. The reality also wouldn’t be fun. Our lives are so hectic now with busy careers, children etc - we don’t generally have mum at home anymore to go out to the shops to buy everything in person.

Anyone born pre-internet can advise...perhaps all those Gen-X finding themselves pushed out of the workforce for being 'overqualified' will be deemed useful again.

You would book by calling, writing or turning up. Did you never travel with a Rough Guide and a couple of numbers to call on arrival to see if spaces were free? That was all of my late teens and 20s and only once was the first choice not available (the second was). I still do it today. Haven't had a problem.

You'd bank in person, at a physical bank, with humans to help you if you didn't understand something.

You would actually see a human Dr face to face.

The world today couldn't function without the internet. There's no going back.

Totally with you on the online work documentation. Time consuming, never worked properly and dodgy connectivity ( live in remote area). Sending smoke signals would sometimes be quicker and easier! Also they were for ever changing formats, you would just get used to one and then it would disappear and a new ' upgrade ' would appear.

Well I’d probably lose my job, as would most of the other 9,000 people who work for the company. We are pretty much all virtual and my closest office is Granada.

I don’t have a landline phone and there isn’t a bank nearby. I guess my mum’s alert watch would cease to function so she might fall or become unwell and nobody would know.

Other than that, I’m sure it’d all be fine 🙄

If you still have a local paper.
it would take time and money to put these things in place.

I’m pretty old - Can’t recall exactly with concert tickets, think you used to ring a phone number and tickets came in the post or you collected from the box office. Other events you paid on the gate.
Banks were plentiful on every high street (but shut Wednesday afternoons as were all the other shops!)
If you were ill you rang the Drs and got an appointment that day or the next day, any longer delay was very unusual…
I do like the convenience of the internet, but we did used to manage fine! In fact it was often quicker in many ways.

If you mean literally for one day then the cash would work but if you mean "went down one day and stayed down" then cash would be worthless as the banking system would collapse and without that, your cash is just a piece of paper.

Recruitment can be done via recruitment agencies, or the good old advertisement in a local newspaper. I'd love to have a daily newspaper again.

Quite honestly, I secretly have a wish that the Internet WILL go down one day - it would be so interesting to see how people would cope. I always keep a good amount of cash to hand so no online banking wouldn't worry me at all. I also don't NEED social media, and could spend the time in a more useful way rather than sitting in front of my PC for half the day!