Random Thoughts From Out of Nowhere

Princess Viola

Dumbass Asexual
Citizen
For a while, professional grade betamax is what television stations used. Some advertisers would send us a SVHS and we'd be like, what are we supposed to do with this?

Sooo, yeah, VHS won the consumer base hands down, but beta won the professional base.

It does surprise me that either hang around until 2016.

Still, I do know some people who are avid second hand market buyers of VHS to this day. Not me...but there are people.
I mean technically speaking, VHS is still hanging around - remember I just said that 2016 was when the last company stopped making VCRs. There's still occasionally some special releases of things on VHS.

Obviously we are no longer getting every major Hollywood release on VHS and I doubt this will ever become a full-blown VHS revival-type thing à la the vinyl revival and we won't start seeing retail stores carrying videocassettes again and we won't have companies start to manufacture VCRs again, but the format itself? Technically not dead yet and you can't exactly point to a 'last movie released on VHS' like you can with Betamax. (It was Mission Impossible for Betamax btw, at least in the US - IDK about other countries)

Anyways thinking back on it, I really wish I hadn't just gotten rid of most of my videotapes back when I was like 14 years old, think I just gave them to someone who sold them for literal pennies and I got back like $50 total from them all. I'd rather have gone through them specifically decided which ones do I want to actually keep and which ones do I want to get rid of. It was all kid's TV shows and movies, but there were definitely things in there I would've 100% kept like my Thomas & Friends tapes, Shrek and Shrek 2, and The Land Before Time.

So as it is now my videotape 'collection' is the jive that survived that mass purging, which means it's mostly stuff that was literally meant for preschoolers like some Barney & Friends tapes that I'm pretty sure I never watched in my entire life (and considering these tapes are on top of a shelf that even my literally 5'11 adult self can barely reach, maybe there's a reason I never watched these things as a little kid) and some tapes in my bedroom that weren't with the big collection. Like I know I got at least two surviving Thomas & Friends tapes and I'm pretty sure I still got my copies of Toy Story 2 and Thomas and the Magic Railroad in my bedroom too, but that's literally it.

It sucks - I still got a VCR, I got two VCRs in fact, and one of them is basically all-ready to be hooked up to the TV again. I just don't do it because the TV only has one set of composite input, so it'd be a pain in the ass having to unplug the cable box and then plug in the VCR (actually a VCR/DVD combo unit) to watch something and then have to unplug the VCR/DVD combo unit and replug in the cable box.

I should invest in an AV switcher TBH so I can just have the cable box, VCR/DVD combo unit, and my Wii all hooked up and I'd just need to switch the inputs on the switcher instead - a lot easier than having to constantly unplug and replug in cables. They're less than $20, maybe I'll see if Best Buy has one or something after Christmas.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
I was still buying VHS tapes by the crateload until I basically stopped buying anything for myself.
 

Princess Viola

Dumbass Asexual
Citizen
Relatedly, when exactly did people start calling the tapes just 'VHS' or 'VHS tapes' and the players/recorders 'VHS machines' or 'VHS players'? That has to mostly be a retronym that started to be used after VHS became functionally irrelevant after the mid-2000s, yeah?

Like I know that there were likely some groups of people who would specify 'VHS' to distinguish it from Betamax and other different videotape formats, but I'm talking casual usage. Growing up, I never knew anyone who didn't call these things anything other than 'video' or 'videotape' and the machines were always VCRs, which is what they are. (I never called them cassettes even though I knew VCR was video cassette recorder because I always associated the term 'cassette' with audio cassettes)
 

Caldwin

Eorzean Idiot
Citizen
I've always heard the machines called VCR's. The cassettes I've heard called different things interchangeably.
 

DefaultOption

Sourball
Citizen
Yeah, the machines were always VCRs (there were just VHS players without the recorder part, but I don't know anyone who had one at home), and the cassettes were always tapes.

It was so ubiquitous that some people called cartridges for Sega and Nintendo consoles 'tapes'.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
Main power line. A crew has been here a while and they still think it's going to be another hour.
 

Princess Viola

Dumbass Asexual
Citizen
I've mentioned this before in a couple places but I still have a hard time comprehending the fact that sensory overload/overstimulation isn't a thing that the majority of people deal with.

Like I've spent my entire life thinking this was 'normal' and that everyone just suffered internally in places with a bunch of noises and people but then I learn that this doesn't bother most of y'all???
 

The Mighty Mollusk

Scream all you like, 'cause we're all mad here
Citizen
The worst part is that most people don't get it and think you're just ignoring them or being rude. No, I honestly can't make out what's being said to me sometimes, the world is making too damn much noise.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
My brain turns white noise into voices and tries to fill in the gaps. I'm not ignoring you. I'm trying to tell if someone's actually calling my name or if that's just a fan blowing somewhere.
 

MEDdMI

Nonstop Baaka
Citizen
My biggest weakness with sensory overload is crowded gatherings, where there's multiple convos at once, and it feels rude to stare at my phone too much or step away for long. I'm ok if I can move/get to a quieter area, or if I have something I can focus on.
 

Princess Viola

Dumbass Asexual
Citizen
When I went shopping a couple days ago, I forgot my earbuds at home and while Target and Barnes & Noble were manageable, the mall was so goddamn loud I had to resort to covering my ears with my hands otherwise I wouldn't have been able to handle it.

Btw I've started using my earbuds as makeshift earplugs when the noise gets too much to handle, they help a lot. I had a hard time bringing myself to start doing it because I've had it so engrained into me that it's 'rude' to use earbuds at the store for some reason but hug it. People are walking around with their damn AirPods all the time, let me use my earbuds and not even listen to music - I just need something to muffle the noise.

Another thing I do when I'm at stores I regularly go to (like Walmart or Target) is I have a routine I need to follow when I'm at the store with the way I walk through the store and focusing on my routine helps me tune out the noise but omg when there's a crowd and it's noisy at a part of the store I need to be in or something breaks my routine aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Pain.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
Where the heck did you find a mall that's still busy enough to be loud?
 

Princess Viola

Dumbass Asexual
Citizen
OK I think one thing y'all need to understand when I talk about sensory overload or overstimulation is that I get it from situations that I've found out recently don't bother the majority of people.

Like the majority of people have no issues being in a kind of busy grocery store and don't get bothered by the buzzing of the florescent lights, the squeaking of the wheels of the shopping carts, people having conversations, etc. But I do.

So like I guarantee you if most people were at the mall I was at (Broward Mall btw), they probably wouldn't say it was loud at all but for me, it was getting unbearable with how noisy it was for myself.
 


Top Bottom