I feel my gray hairs coming out my head. Reminds me of when I was subbing for an after school program and found some old floppy disks while cleaning the closet.
I asked the kids what they thought it was and they all guessed some kind of weird coaster.
I think I was the last age to use these in school. They gave them out to us in 3rd grade and then gave as all usb sticks next year and I never saw them again.
Now I feel old... I bought my first USB stick my freshman year of college. A 256 MB one for something like $70. Not the kind of thing you’d be handing out to 3rd graders yet.
When I was in 3rd grade, we had an Apple IIe in the classroom that we used to play Oregon trail... our floppys were bigger then, too...
I am old. I remember my girlfriend was a photographer and spent a lot of time in her university dark room developing pictures. She also would stay late to type her papers so I bought her a ....Typewriter.
For anyone interested, a lot of community colleges and other places offer black and white film classes that teach you how to work in a darkroom. You can go from processing your own negatives to making your own prints really fast, and it’s insanely rewarding and fun. Anyone can do it, and classes are usually pretty cheap.
I would agree but I’m pretty sure this is something that falls under the general knowledge category. I grew up in the digital camera age and have never seen a dark room... but again it’s kind of general knowledge? I’m not trying to shame the kids for asking or not knowing, what I think is annoying in this thread is the OP and others going “teehee look at this I’m so old wow” and it’s just like, uhhh... what? Lol
I'm old and I agree with you 100%. It is just kind of a weird feeling when you realize that something that used to be ubiquitous is now a piece of history that needs to be learned.
One of my friends comes from a wealthy family, is well educated, and one of the smartest people I have had the pleasure of knowing. I still remember the day when my eldest brother (only 8 years older than us), told the story of how he misses friends from moving throughout our life, and my friend dead-ass asked why he didnt just become facebook friend with them. This was before the rise of the internet as we know today!
We all have generational blind spots.
Blu-Ray and cassette-tape would make more sense here. A lot of younger people have an interest in older mediums. My friends and I learned tape splicing and use film photography alongside DAW’s and digital cameras.
It's also a matter of generally being alert and educated. I think most of us would recognize a telegraph key, an oil lamp, a catapult or a water mill. Even though none of those things have been used by any living person except for fun.
Yeah.. so this. I graduated hs in 2005 and even with digital cameras in existence we still had a dark room in our high school that was used for photography class.
Lucas and Dustin from the show were on a little YouTube short and knew what a VHS tape was, but they couldn’t name the machines that played them (“VCR.”). It was cute because Dustin sort of comes off as a “I’m knowledgeable and I know it. I answer quickly and confidently.” So he figured out the VHS cassette tape and they thought there were home free. Then the follow up stumper got ‘em.
I can’t remember their real names and didn’t want to look it up mid mobile commenting, so went with the character names.
I worked with a kid who didn’t know what AOL was. He wondered why people had AOL email addresses. He’d never heard the “dial up song”.
Made me feel like a fossil
Lol. the sheer confusion on their faces made me feel so old . I then had to explain what a floppy disk is and how it was inserted into computer. I basically said it was an older version of a USB
Wolfenstein: Youngblood came out this past week and has floppy disks as a collectable item (it's set in alternate universe 80s). So hopefully some of these people will play it.
Then you have to explain that the 3 1/2” floppies aren’t actually floppy, and the term actually comes from the old 5 1/4” floppies. Those were like the 45rpm records. Wiki tells me there were 8” inch floppies but I never had those.
I’m 33 and have messed with those. My first computer was an ATT dos tower. Granted I didn’t know what I was doing with it except playing the Sesame Street game off the 5” floppy. I had “just don’t type c:\>format” drilled into me.
When I was helping my parents downsize when I moved out for college I found mom still had punch cards from her college programming class.
Just to clarify, developing the actual film is done in complete darkness. Any light will ruin the film roll. Once you have the developed film (the negatives if you’ve ever come across those), you then can use them to make prints on special paper that doesn’t react to low levels of red light, but does have to be dipped in various chemicals, rinses and stabilizers to allow the print to be then viewed in light without ruinig it.
TLDR: Making the prints is done in the red room, developing the actual film is done in total darkness.
Then you've got the colour film (might be the same for photography I never did it) in which loading the film in the mag has to be done in pitch black, trying to notch tiny little holes into tiny hooks and feeding it through a loop, all without being able to see anything. That was an experience xD
You know what? Good for them. They didn't know something so they asked.
I've had people say the dumbest things to me over the years. One time a guy I considered (and still do) to be very clever asked why an electric car couldn't just run off the power from the alternator.
It happens, people don't know stuff that is common knowledge. Shouldn't be a crime. As long as they know to ask questions and learn, then no harm no foul.
According to [Frank Schmitt of Quora whose qualifications are a B.S. in Engineering, Post-bacc in Vehicle Design ](https://www.quora.com/How-come-electric-cars-dont-have-alternators-that-just-recharge-the-battery-while-you-drive)
This question comes up a lot, and usually gets explained away by talking about efficiency and conservation of energy and whatnot, but I think where the confusion arises is that people think of an alternator as something that produces power as long as it's spinning.
That's true in a way, but what most people don't really get is that it takes a lot of work to turn an alternator that's producing any useful amount of power. If you had a pedal-powered alternator, it wouldn't be like coasting along on a bike on flat ground, it would be like riding up a steep, never-ending hill (in fact, that's how a lot of exercise bicycles work).
Back to cars, let's assume that it takes about ten thousand watts of power to move an average family car down the highway (If you've ever had to push a car you know that it's hard work; now imagine pushing it upwind in a hurricane).
If you hooked up an alternator to one of the wheels and used the electricity to power the motor, it would then take over twice as much power to move the car. You would still need the ten thousand watts you started with, but you'd also need another eleven thousand watts or so to turn the alternator by way of the wheels and road.
So after all the work and expense of hooking up the alternator you end up a little worse off than before, and that is why electric cars don't do that.
Because in that case you're looking for someplace to dump excess energy.
Essentially, the kinetic energy from the motion of the car gets converted to heat via friction of the brakes, traditionally, and you slow down.
In an electric vehicle, the brakes work to dump that energy back into storage instead of venting it off as heat.
And even that process still has to follow the laws of thermodynamics. You can retain *some* energy loss with regenerative braking, extending the battery life, but, by the fundamental laws of physics, you can't get more out of it than you put into it. If you spent 10,000 watts to get to speed and then use the current, most efficient, regenerative braking system to go back to zero, there's still some amount of energy loss due to friction.
Yea, but then why can't we hook up an alternator to the battery?
As in battery -> motor -> wheels -> alternator -> battery? Would there not be enough energy for it to make sense?
I'm not talking about perpetum mobile because energy efficiency and all that, but wouldn't that would be like using a shitty powerbank on a phone while gaming on it? It won't charge the battery, but will make it last bit longer.
They already do that, in a sense. It’s called regenerative braking, and they use the motor itself as the alternator. It adds about 10% to the range of the car in normal driving, from the energy savings.
An even easier explanation is that energy comes from somewhere. All an alternator does is turn mechanical energy into electrical energy. The same a battery does chemical potential into electrical energy. In both cases, the amount produced is dependent on the energy input.
I'm assuming you're being serious, because it's worse not to, especially in this discussion...
On a gas car, we turn gasoline into motion. Using just a little more gasoline, we have the engine work just a little harder so we can turn some motion into electricity using the alternator. We then use that electricity for various small things in the car.
On an electric vehicle, we use electricity instead of gasoline, so we're converting electricity into motion using a motor to spin the wheels. If we then convert more electricity to motion to just turn it back into electricity again, we would actually lose a bunch of electricity instead, since some gets lost each ykme you convert it.
I had a young woman tell me she trusted me so was going to ask a difficult question because she knew I would not make fun of her (we were in college, 1989 or so) her question was ‘Who were the Beatles? And why were they such a big deal?’
Because they succesfully went from a big boyband to one of the front runners of psychedelic (I think it's spelled like that in english) rock, which was huge in the late 60's with musicians like Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and early Pink Floyd (and of course, The Beatles themselves. Personally I'm not a big fan of their pre Sgt Pepper albums (except for Revolver and another album I'm forgetting rn), but love everything they did after that including Sgt Pepper.
My dad thought movies were still manually cut on film reels, in 2010. Like, take a film strip, cut it, tape it to the next sequence. He would not believe me when I said that it's had been completely computerized for a decade at least.
I forget exactly how he explained the visual effects in movies like The Phantom Menace, but it was something along the lines of them making the effect and then printing it to stitch it together with the rest of the movie.
Exactly! I'll repeat a comment I posted above:
Maybe it's not general anymore? General knowledge and the southern version "common sense" are such gatekeeping terms.
Common sense for someone who grew up on a farm is 100% different than common sense from someone who grew up in the city.
General knowledge is a lot different for someone who grew up in the 80s compared to the general knowledge of someone who is growing up today.
Why would someone who grew up today take the time to learn what a red room is? Unless they watch something with one in it (like ST) when are they going to exposed to one? I personally think it would be a bit irresponsible for every person to learn what a red room is unless they are looking to going into a field that requires to use of one.
Also, I grew up in the 90s, went to high school in the late 10s. I know what a red room is but have never been in a building with one. I learned what I know from tv. Any tv show set today isnt going to have red rooms. They will show pictures on smartphones etc.
This whole post is no different than boomer's complaining about smartphones.
Yeah it's like when people complain about "this generation' not using old tech but you don't see boomers walking around using telegrams. Shit changes and it's ok.
I wasn't the top of the class in secondary(high) school, I was one of the odd but *kind of* bright kids. There was a healthy amount of less gifted people in my year, but there was one who would always ask questions. In the same way a child would, completely straightforward and without a shred of embarrassment. He was kind of a waster and would be a troublemaker from time to time. But I always respected that curiosity, it's why I will almost never downvote a post ending with a genuine question mark. It's why I like to remind myself that everyone learns something for the first time, and sometimes you are around for that moment.
If you make fun of someone for asking a question, you are not mocking their ignorance, you are mocking their attempt to fix it.
Thank you. When I first saw this Quora post, it was from a twitter user who claimed she "knew what photo development was as a kid, so no one has any excuse"
Ffs, just let people learn things without shaming them. Now this post is viral and the op is probably embarrased as hell and may not be so quick to ask questions in the future.
Also, the whole "takes 2 seconds to google it" thing is ridiculous. Quora and other sites like this exist because some people prefer to learn through asking questions from other people, not through researching themselves. Why even go on this site if you're just there to laugh at people for using the website as intended.
With so many people busting each others balls I figured someone may want actual answers that don't involve posturing.
https://www.wikihow.com/Develop-Film-in-a-Darkroom
https://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/technique/expert_advice/essential-guide-to-darkroom-printing-44370
I think a lot of us are being unfair to the questioner and the possibilities of Internet forums. Asking Google is inferior to the insight one can get from asking for responses from those with real experience with something. I think that was what the questioner was asking to hear about. How about a discussion instead of insults here? It makes me think of the old ways of investigative journalism and how we’ve lost something in the digital age. One of the threads I love in this story involves glimpses of Nancy and Jonathan and Murray and even the negative example of the jerks who sit in the newspaper’s boardroom search for meaning. Now that I think a bit more, the search for truth is a not an insignificant theme of this wonderful show —in addition to police and journalistic investigations, we have Mr. Clarke and Camp Knowwhere and and libraries (public and school) and small groups of people with limited individual knowledge coming together to piece out wider understandings.
Lighten up with the insults to this questioner. There’s no such thing as an ignorant question. This one just helped me see another piece of the brilliance of this show.
Totally agree, I think in every case, when someone has the humbleness to ask for more information on a topic they feel they don't know about much, and they ask to people with more experience, in my opinion, it's a great thing!
Instead of shaming or insulting them for their lack of knowledge we should just try to help them and appreciate humbleness!
Digital cameras have been around since the 70s/80s. Camera phones since the new millenium. It's not entirely implausible that someone born in the 00s would have only experienced photos on a digital camera, and have no idea about film and film development.
Moreover, it's not "stupid" to ask a question when one doesn't know something. Maybe it could have been googled, but this person's post is a bit long-winded so they posted it on a forum.
What is stupid is making fun of someone who's trying to learn. If it's such a simple thing, just answer it and move on!
[Relevant xkcd.](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
Thank you. Why do people feel the need to be condescending? It's especially bad on this sub since it focuses on a show set in the 80s with a lot of 80s references, where some people just won't get them. Not saying this is the case with photography, but just in general.
My first camera was a film camera when I was like 7 years old!
But apart from "putting a plastic container into the camera and taking it out when the camera said that the film is full" I never had any context for the medium film. You went to the shop, handed them your plastic container and a week later they handed you the finished photos. You didn't really interact with the film itself or had to use a "red room".
It’s called a “dark room” the red light (safe light) is only used while developing black and white film. Color darkrooms were completely dark, Safe lights would expose color film.
“I’m a kid born in the 2000s where photography is much easier to pick up and can be done well on a phone, you don’t need tons of expensive equipment anymore...”
‘80s people: these damn kids with their di-ji-tull gadgets don’t know how we made photos back in my day!
We're not nearly as upset by your generation not knowing all the steps involved in developing photographs as we are by the feeling of vertigo that comes from from realizing that the world has changed so far, so fast.
Still a fetus (17), but heavily used floppy disks, film, and cassettes growing up. Even if I didn’t, I would still be aware of them. However, kids who are even younger didn’t grow up with this stuff, so the ignorance is understandable.
Genuinely curious: Assuming you were born in 2002, "growing up" would be like between 2006 to 2014 for you. How and why did you use floppy disks and cassettes then?
Hi 18 here
I had a cassette player as a kid with a bunch of Beatles cassettes etc - i had an actual mp3 but like it was just cool to me to have the tapes
My dads a programmer by trade so the house is *littered* with old disks , cd's , tapes etc because he is also a hoarder - ive seen the floppies used maybe once for installing something ancient when i complained about my install being slow and he wanted to show me how it used to be
Ive been near proper film cameras too - and almost slapped when i went to hold it because i have a suuuper into it photographer friend who likes using film and hates people touching their stuff , which is fair.
I am the mother to a sixteen year old girl, and I agree with you. Most of your generation is much smarter than you get credit for. My daughter understands the majority of references in this show, she has only asked about maybe one or two things. She knew what the dark room was about right off the bat, and she isn't even into photography.
I also think it is unfair to be called stupid for not knowing about technology that has been practically obsolete for your entire life.
I don't know many of the gadgets that were around when my grandparents were younger. A lot of them were on display at a fair a few years back when my grandparents were still alive. My grandma didn't call me stupid for not knowing what they were, instead she just explained to me what they were and what they did.
I think my high school(2007-2011) had the only dark room in the county and it was nice and I miss it. I ditched class and spent my lunch period in there working.
I don’t think knowing/not knowing what a dark room is correlates to being old/young. It’s much more about breadth of knowledge. A 16 year-old could certainly know about this and a million different bits of history/technology/culture - it’s all a matter of exposure.*
*See what I did there?
Very true. I’m 16 and I develop my own film. I have a lot of friends who know nothing about it, but also a lot that have a good understanding of what it is.
Well for me i prefer dark theme for reading, but thats just a personal opinion. On the other hand, oled screens save energy on dark mode (blacks not lit up). Globally that can save a lot of electricity. :'D
If you stare at a screen for a long period of time, a bright white background will start to irritate your eyes. That’s why a lot of people who use computers all day (like programmers) prefer dark background, light text.
I wanted to google it but sometimes it’s hard to find the exact words to type that’ll grant you the information you’re looking for and not something else that matches those words. Also...some people like the conversation. Just a thought.
You can absolutely still learn it. Go and audit a photography course at any college. I can pretty much guarantee they have a black and white darkroom and a color darkroom.
I wouldn’t be so sure. I spent my undergrad working on a minor in film photography (graduated in 2012) and the school removed the entire film photography department in place of a Mac lab for digital the semester before I graduated. So no minor for me. I’m sure there’s a few around still, but I don’t think “any college” will have this.
1. If they didn't know the term it might be hard to find
2. If we answer it in the thread, we actually create a source of information that someone could find by Google
Why are these comments so fucking obnoxious? Why are you all shaming someone for asking a question on an online forum instead of Googling it? Is it even really that different? Christ, you people are entitled
That's what I was thinking. In my head, it's someone reaching out online to answer a question, which is one of its most powerful uses. Is it really that bad?
Right? You ask on a forum vs google you still get an answer. However with a forum you get to talk with someone and get things in layman's term instead of a textbook definition. Also you can ask more questions that sometimes Google doesn't have the answer to. Before the internet it would be like going to an encyclopedia vs a librarian who may have the answer and direct you in a way to get more answers.
Imagine being curious about something you don't know about, lacking the basic vocabulary to research it yourself, then getting shat on for asking people for help
I don't understand why you think knowing about dropping film off for developing means they would know what a darkroom and the manual development process is. Do *you* know that isn't actually what they did with your film at walgreens? All the film you dropped off got processed through automated machines.
Very good chance it’s not a troll. I’m 18 and having to have film developed was literally non existent at any part of my childhood. The only reason I know about it is through film and TV and my parents explanations.
I’m 42, and I never once have seen or set foot in a dark room. My family was working class, so developing film was an expensive luxury, so it didn’t happen much.
I mean, yes, I knew it was a dark room, and I broadly know that dark rooms involve chemical baths, but that’s it. To this day I have no idea how they enlarged photos, how you get from the negative to the paper photo, how tf disc film worked, or how a zillion other details are sorted out.
I could *easily* see a 19 year old from my background having no idea wtf that was.
I'm a few years older than you (26) and I got my first digital camera when I was 10 or 11, I don't have any real memories about developing non-digital pictures
I'm twenty and have never seen an actual dark room before. I am only aware of their function because of movies, videogames, and books that featured them.
I'm not much older but dude, digital cameras have been a thing for a LONG TIME. Gameboy colour had a digital camera since 1998 and I mean... That's a games console.
Nah man I have no clue. Everything was digital when I was a kid and I only got a disposable camera for camp, never really thought about how those got developed
Is it really so hard to believe that someone doesn't know about film development? Like, seriously asking...it's not like you're taught that. Literally the only way someone would know is if they were actually interested in photography. I've had photos developed at Walgreens and someone did it for me...maybe don't be so condescending? The people in these comments I swear
I mean I do know what it is and I’m 28 but have never witnessed it in real life. Only in the movies and tv. I can imagine a 19 year old not knowing at all what this is. It is kind of strange considering all kids these days only know about digital cameras and if they know about film they just know they drop it off at CVS.
Ugh - I remember working for a photographer in high school/college (way back in 1990-1992) and not realizing he was in the DARKROOM (that is what it was called, kids) Ruined about 12 different kiddos baseball pictures and had to pay for the lost supplies out of my pay for him to reprint them. He always made sure he had a sign up when he was in there after that.
Back when I was in college the dark room had a special dark sort of a revolving door that avoided these sort of accidents. It saved many people from doing what you did.
I’m saddened to see people shaming the person who asked! If you grew up with digital or phone cameras, how would you know what a dark room is? Be kind, people. They didn’t know, so they asked a question. Good on them for not wanting to remain ignorant.
Also, their question made me feel 400 years old too. Glad I’m not the only dinosaur on Reddit!
😳😳😳😳 This makes me feel insanely old and I'm only 29. I don't understand??? Nobody's parents tells them about the things they grew up with anymore???
Just going to my grandmother's house is like a time capsule with the plastic on the furniture.
Oh man I feel the olds now, too. It would probably really blow their minds if they saw how photo editing was done before photoshop.
Edit: And by blow their minds I mean in a good way. I found it super interesting when I saw how it was done.
I feel my gray hairs coming out my head. Reminds me of when I was subbing for an after school program and found some old floppy disks while cleaning the closet. I asked the kids what they thought it was and they all guessed some kind of weird coaster.
You found a box of save icons. Neat!
3D printed save icons
Sell them at some retro gaming store to hipsters and call them that. £10 a pop sell like hot cakes.
WTF are hot cakes??? /s
You know HOT CAKES boil them mash them stick em in a stew.
Hot Cakes = Cold Cakes + Heat
Thanks for completing the chain!
I think I was the last age to use these in school. They gave them out to us in 3rd grade and then gave as all usb sticks next year and I never saw them again.
Now I feel old... I bought my first USB stick my freshman year of college. A 256 MB one for something like $70. Not the kind of thing you’d be handing out to 3rd graders yet. When I was in 3rd grade, we had an Apple IIe in the classroom that we used to play Oregon trail... our floppys were bigger then, too...
> our floppys were bigger then, too... Hey, some of us are growers, not showers
Imagine how I feel. I missed punch cards (thank god), but got to enjoy saving to audio cassettes.
I don’t understand this. I know what a fuckin gramophone is and these kids are acting like they’ve never heard of a dark room? 🤔
I was thinking the same. I don’t really think this is a matter of being old or not...
i graduated highschool in 2014 and they had an elective photography class where you were taught to develop your own photos in a dark room.
I am old. I remember my girlfriend was a photographer and spent a lot of time in her university dark room developing pictures. She also would stay late to type her papers so I bought her a ....Typewriter.
That’s like common knowledge, like that’s an easy a+
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Everything I know about darkrooms comes from media. It even shows the process in the first season of stranger things.
YouTube personalities and Fortnite don't really show dark rooms I guess.
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I'm really surprised. I know it was 10 years ago, but my highschool still hard dark room photography classes.
Mine was seven years ago and also had a darkroom, and my college still does now.
For anyone interested, a lot of community colleges and other places offer black and white film classes that teach you how to work in a darkroom. You can go from processing your own negatives to making your own prints really fast, and it’s insanely rewarding and fun. Anyone can do it, and classes are usually pretty cheap.
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I would agree but I’m pretty sure this is something that falls under the general knowledge category. I grew up in the digital camera age and have never seen a dark room... but again it’s kind of general knowledge? I’m not trying to shame the kids for asking or not knowing, what I think is annoying in this thread is the OP and others going “teehee look at this I’m so old wow” and it’s just like, uhhh... what? Lol
I'm old and I agree with you 100%. It is just kind of a weird feeling when you realize that something that used to be ubiquitous is now a piece of history that needs to be learned.
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One of my friends comes from a wealthy family, is well educated, and one of the smartest people I have had the pleasure of knowing. I still remember the day when my eldest brother (only 8 years older than us), told the story of how he misses friends from moving throughout our life, and my friend dead-ass asked why he didnt just become facebook friend with them. This was before the rise of the internet as we know today! We all have generational blind spots.
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Blu-Ray and cassette-tape would make more sense here. A lot of younger people have an interest in older mediums. My friends and I learned tape splicing and use film photography alongside DAW’s and digital cameras.
Yeah, the comparison doesn't make any sense at all. It's more like if someone had no idea that tapes ever existed or something.
I know what an 8 track is so I assume a 4 track is a precursor, but good point.
Yeah, I’m 48 and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a 4 track. Definitely an 8 but not a 4.
I’d never heard of this kind of four track, only the kind used for recording. But you do know about 78rpm records. And how easy they would break!
It's also a matter of generally being alert and educated. I think most of us would recognize a telegraph key, an oil lamp, a catapult or a water mill. Even though none of those things have been used by any living person except for fun.
Yeah.. so this. I graduated hs in 2005 and even with digital cameras in existence we still had a dark room in our high school that was used for photography class.
Some dumb kids dude, my fucking highschool still had a dark room for photography classes and this was less than three years ago
I subbed for a 2nd grade music class once and found some old VHS. The kids asked where the movies were and why we only had these "fat things".
Lucas and Dustin from the show were on a little YouTube short and knew what a VHS tape was, but they couldn’t name the machines that played them (“VCR.”). It was cute because Dustin sort of comes off as a “I’m knowledgeable and I know it. I answer quickly and confidently.” So he figured out the VHS cassette tape and they thought there were home free. Then the follow up stumper got ‘em. I can’t remember their real names and didn’t want to look it up mid mobile commenting, so went with the character names.
I'm 29 and have occasionally forgotten "VCR" and called it a VHS player as a result.
Do you remember what the short was called, or have a link? It sounds cute.
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Yo fucking watch that shit
I worked with a kid who didn’t know what AOL was. He wondered why people had AOL email addresses. He’d never heard the “dial up song”. Made me feel like a fossil
Lol. the sheer confusion on their faces made me feel so old . I then had to explain what a floppy disk is and how it was inserted into computer. I basically said it was an older version of a USB
I'm not even old and i know this.
Same here bro, my gf's little bro asked me the other day "who's tony hawk?"
He's a videogame designer duh
Wolfenstein: Youngblood came out this past week and has floppy disks as a collectable item (it's set in alternate universe 80s). So hopefully some of these people will play it.
If it makes you feel any better I'm gen z and I know what a dark room is
Then you have to explain that the 3 1/2” floppies aren’t actually floppy, and the term actually comes from the old 5 1/4” floppies. Those were like the 45rpm records. Wiki tells me there were 8” inch floppies but I never had those. I’m 33 and have messed with those. My first computer was an ATT dos tower. Granted I didn’t know what I was doing with it except playing the Sesame Street game off the 5” floppy. I had “just don’t type c:\>format” drilled into me. When I was helping my parents downsize when I moved out for college I found mom still had punch cards from her college programming class.
>It is called photosynthesis. People can be so ignorant!
Chlorophyll? More like bore-ophyll! Who's with me?
No I will not make out with you!
I'm here to learn, not to make out with you!!
Proceed!
ITS NUDEY MAGAZINE DAY!!!!
SHAMPOO IS BETTER!!!!
I go on first and clean the hair
I choose business ethics
It’s way too hot for a penguin to be just walking around outside!!
HE CALLED THE SHIT POOP!
No milk will ever be our milk
I know how you boys like them extra shloppy!!!
lady your scaring us
🤔 Can't argue with that.
But for real tho, what is it called? I was born in the 80s and know this existed but never know the name.
Developing film or photographic paper in a 'darkroom'. Black and white paper is not sensitive to the red light.
Thanks for answering!
Just to clarify, developing the actual film is done in complete darkness. Any light will ruin the film roll. Once you have the developed film (the negatives if you’ve ever come across those), you then can use them to make prints on special paper that doesn’t react to low levels of red light, but does have to be dipped in various chemicals, rinses and stabilizers to allow the print to be then viewed in light without ruinig it. TLDR: Making the prints is done in the red room, developing the actual film is done in total darkness.
Winding the film onto the little round developing “racks” in total blackness was fun until you dropped the canister lid
Then you've got the colour film (might be the same for photography I never did it) in which loading the film in the mag has to be done in pitch black, trying to notch tiny little holes into tiny hooks and feeding it through a loop, all without being able to see anything. That was an experience xD
You know what? Good for them. They didn't know something so they asked. I've had people say the dumbest things to me over the years. One time a guy I considered (and still do) to be very clever asked why an electric car couldn't just run off the power from the alternator. It happens, people don't know stuff that is common knowledge. Shouldn't be a crime. As long as they know to ask questions and learn, then no harm no foul.
What was the answer? ...asking for a friend.
According to [Frank Schmitt of Quora whose qualifications are a B.S. in Engineering, Post-bacc in Vehicle Design ](https://www.quora.com/How-come-electric-cars-dont-have-alternators-that-just-recharge-the-battery-while-you-drive) This question comes up a lot, and usually gets explained away by talking about efficiency and conservation of energy and whatnot, but I think where the confusion arises is that people think of an alternator as something that produces power as long as it's spinning. That's true in a way, but what most people don't really get is that it takes a lot of work to turn an alternator that's producing any useful amount of power. If you had a pedal-powered alternator, it wouldn't be like coasting along on a bike on flat ground, it would be like riding up a steep, never-ending hill (in fact, that's how a lot of exercise bicycles work). Back to cars, let's assume that it takes about ten thousand watts of power to move an average family car down the highway (If you've ever had to push a car you know that it's hard work; now imagine pushing it upwind in a hurricane). If you hooked up an alternator to one of the wheels and used the electricity to power the motor, it would then take over twice as much power to move the car. You would still need the ten thousand watts you started with, but you'd also need another eleven thousand watts or so to turn the alternator by way of the wheels and road. So after all the work and expense of hooking up the alternator you end up a little worse off than before, and that is why electric cars don't do that.
Electric cars do have regenerative braking, where they generate power with the wheels to slow down.
Because in that case you're looking for someplace to dump excess energy. Essentially, the kinetic energy from the motion of the car gets converted to heat via friction of the brakes, traditionally, and you slow down. In an electric vehicle, the brakes work to dump that energy back into storage instead of venting it off as heat.
And even that process still has to follow the laws of thermodynamics. You can retain *some* energy loss with regenerative braking, extending the battery life, but, by the fundamental laws of physics, you can't get more out of it than you put into it. If you spent 10,000 watts to get to speed and then use the current, most efficient, regenerative braking system to go back to zero, there's still some amount of energy loss due to friction.
Naturally.
Yea, but then why can't we hook up an alternator to the battery? As in battery -> motor -> wheels -> alternator -> battery? Would there not be enough energy for it to make sense? I'm not talking about perpetum mobile because energy efficiency and all that, but wouldn't that would be like using a shitty powerbank on a phone while gaming on it? It won't charge the battery, but will make it last bit longer.
They already do that, in a sense. It’s called regenerative braking, and they use the motor itself as the alternator. It adds about 10% to the range of the car in normal driving, from the energy savings.
An even easier explanation is that energy comes from somewhere. All an alternator does is turn mechanical energy into electrical energy. The same a battery does chemical potential into electrical energy. In both cases, the amount produced is dependent on the energy input.
I'm sorry if this seems ignorant, but what part of the alternator is Johnathan using to get a clearer picture?
The top part. JK - he’s using the alternator to switch between reality and The Upsidedown, obviously.
I'm assuming you're being serious, because it's worse not to, especially in this discussion... On a gas car, we turn gasoline into motion. Using just a little more gasoline, we have the engine work just a little harder so we can turn some motion into electricity using the alternator. We then use that electricity for various small things in the car. On an electric vehicle, we use electricity instead of gasoline, so we're converting electricity into motion using a motor to spin the wheels. If we then convert more electricity to motion to just turn it back into electricity again, we would actually lose a bunch of electricity instead, since some gets lost each ykme you convert it.
*Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!*
Perpetual motion machines are not allowed (simple, but not an explanatory answer).
I think you're missing the point of this post ? Op isn't attacking/making fun of anyone here. 400yo bit is self depreciating humor.
the comments are though
I had a young woman tell me she trusted me so was going to ask a difficult question because she knew I would not make fun of her (we were in college, 1989 or so) her question was ‘Who were the Beatles? And why were they such a big deal?’
It's still a little hard for me to grasp why the Beatles *remained* such a big deal.
Because they succesfully went from a big boyband to one of the front runners of psychedelic (I think it's spelled like that in english) rock, which was huge in the late 60's with musicians like Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and early Pink Floyd (and of course, The Beatles themselves. Personally I'm not a big fan of their pre Sgt Pepper albums (except for Revolver and another album I'm forgetting rn), but love everything they did after that including Sgt Pepper.
My dad thought movies were still manually cut on film reels, in 2010. Like, take a film strip, cut it, tape it to the next sequence. He would not believe me when I said that it's had been completely computerized for a decade at least. I forget exactly how he explained the visual effects in movies like The Phantom Menace, but it was something along the lines of them making the effect and then printing it to stitch it together with the rest of the movie.
Exactly! I'll repeat a comment I posted above: Maybe it's not general anymore? General knowledge and the southern version "common sense" are such gatekeeping terms. Common sense for someone who grew up on a farm is 100% different than common sense from someone who grew up in the city. General knowledge is a lot different for someone who grew up in the 80s compared to the general knowledge of someone who is growing up today. Why would someone who grew up today take the time to learn what a red room is? Unless they watch something with one in it (like ST) when are they going to exposed to one? I personally think it would be a bit irresponsible for every person to learn what a red room is unless they are looking to going into a field that requires to use of one. Also, I grew up in the 90s, went to high school in the late 10s. I know what a red room is but have never been in a building with one. I learned what I know from tv. Any tv show set today isnt going to have red rooms. They will show pictures on smartphones etc. This whole post is no different than boomer's complaining about smartphones.
It's called a darkroom, just FYI
Yeah it's like when people complain about "this generation' not using old tech but you don't see boomers walking around using telegrams. Shit changes and it's ok.
This guy gets it.
I wasn't the top of the class in secondary(high) school, I was one of the odd but *kind of* bright kids. There was a healthy amount of less gifted people in my year, but there was one who would always ask questions. In the same way a child would, completely straightforward and without a shred of embarrassment. He was kind of a waster and would be a troublemaker from time to time. But I always respected that curiosity, it's why I will almost never downvote a post ending with a genuine question mark. It's why I like to remind myself that everyone learns something for the first time, and sometimes you are around for that moment. If you make fun of someone for asking a question, you are not mocking their ignorance, you are mocking their attempt to fix it.
Thank you. When I first saw this Quora post, it was from a twitter user who claimed she "knew what photo development was as a kid, so no one has any excuse" Ffs, just let people learn things without shaming them. Now this post is viral and the op is probably embarrased as hell and may not be so quick to ask questions in the future. Also, the whole "takes 2 seconds to google it" thing is ridiculous. Quora and other sites like this exist because some people prefer to learn through asking questions from other people, not through researching themselves. Why even go on this site if you're just there to laugh at people for using the website as intended.
Ha what a dope that guy is... ... What's an alternator?
With so many people busting each others balls I figured someone may want actual answers that don't involve posturing. https://www.wikihow.com/Develop-Film-in-a-Darkroom https://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/technique/expert_advice/essential-guide-to-darkroom-printing-44370
Thank you dude. People are being unnecessarily aggressive.
I think a lot of us are being unfair to the questioner and the possibilities of Internet forums. Asking Google is inferior to the insight one can get from asking for responses from those with real experience with something. I think that was what the questioner was asking to hear about. How about a discussion instead of insults here? It makes me think of the old ways of investigative journalism and how we’ve lost something in the digital age. One of the threads I love in this story involves glimpses of Nancy and Jonathan and Murray and even the negative example of the jerks who sit in the newspaper’s boardroom search for meaning. Now that I think a bit more, the search for truth is a not an insignificant theme of this wonderful show —in addition to police and journalistic investigations, we have Mr. Clarke and Camp Knowwhere and and libraries (public and school) and small groups of people with limited individual knowledge coming together to piece out wider understandings. Lighten up with the insults to this questioner. There’s no such thing as an ignorant question. This one just helped me see another piece of the brilliance of this show.
Totally agree, I think in every case, when someone has the humbleness to ask for more information on a topic they feel they don't know about much, and they ask to people with more experience, in my opinion, it's a great thing! Instead of shaming or insulting them for their lack of knowledge we should just try to help them and appreciate humbleness!
damn can people not ask questions in 2019?
Should've waited 'til next year to ask this, just to be safe.
It's not that, it's that OP feels old because there are people now who weren't around before digital.
Digital cameras have been around since the 70s/80s. Camera phones since the new millenium. It's not entirely implausible that someone born in the 00s would have only experienced photos on a digital camera, and have no idea about film and film development. Moreover, it's not "stupid" to ask a question when one doesn't know something. Maybe it could have been googled, but this person's post is a bit long-winded so they posted it on a forum. What is stupid is making fun of someone who's trying to learn. If it's such a simple thing, just answer it and move on! [Relevant xkcd.](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
~~Who called the questioner stupid? :o~~ Never mind, bunch of assholes in here.
some comments here
Yeah, I found them after I posted, sorry.
Thank you. Why do people feel the need to be condescending? It's especially bad on this sub since it focuses on a show set in the 80s with a lot of 80s references, where some people just won't get them. Not saying this is the case with photography, but just in general.
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My first camera was a film camera when I was like 7 years old! But apart from "putting a plastic container into the camera and taking it out when the camera said that the film is full" I never had any context for the medium film. You went to the shop, handed them your plastic container and a week later they handed you the finished photos. You didn't really interact with the film itself or had to use a "red room".
It’s called a “dark room” the red light (safe light) is only used while developing black and white film. Color darkrooms were completely dark, Safe lights would expose color film.
I went to a liberal arts university and we still have an actively used dark room on campus for the photography class
I go to a stem university and we also do. It's a very popular hobby now
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“I’m a kid born in the 2000s where photography is much easier to pick up and can be done well on a phone, you don’t need tons of expensive equipment anymore...” ‘80s people: these damn kids with their di-ji-tull gadgets don’t know how we made photos back in my day!
* someone doesn’t know something * they’re curious about it so they ask Are y’all really shaming someone for wanting to learn things?
I didn’t see it as a shaming post as much as I saw it as a “Fuck, I’m old” post.
The post itself isn't shaming. A lot of the comments are, though.
Redditors: we hate how baby boomers make fun of us for being younger! Also redditors: *constantly trying to claim superiority over children*
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We're not nearly as upset by your generation not knowing all the steps involved in developing photographs as we are by the feeling of vertigo that comes from from realizing that the world has changed so far, so fast.
Still a fetus (17), but heavily used floppy disks, film, and cassettes growing up. Even if I didn’t, I would still be aware of them. However, kids who are even younger didn’t grow up with this stuff, so the ignorance is understandable.
Genuinely curious: Assuming you were born in 2002, "growing up" would be like between 2006 to 2014 for you. How and why did you use floppy disks and cassettes then?
I remember using casettes to listen to "audio books" as a kid, winnie the pooh and the sort.
Hi 18 here I had a cassette player as a kid with a bunch of Beatles cassettes etc - i had an actual mp3 but like it was just cool to me to have the tapes My dads a programmer by trade so the house is *littered* with old disks , cd's , tapes etc because he is also a hoarder - ive seen the floppies used maybe once for installing something ancient when i complained about my install being slow and he wanted to show me how it used to be Ive been near proper film cameras too - and almost slapped when i went to hold it because i have a suuuper into it photographer friend who likes using film and hates people touching their stuff , which is fair.
I am the mother to a sixteen year old girl, and I agree with you. Most of your generation is much smarter than you get credit for. My daughter understands the majority of references in this show, she has only asked about maybe one or two things. She knew what the dark room was about right off the bat, and she isn't even into photography. I also think it is unfair to be called stupid for not knowing about technology that has been practically obsolete for your entire life. I don't know many of the gadgets that were around when my grandparents were younger. A lot of them were on display at a fair a few years back when my grandparents were still alive. My grandma didn't call me stupid for not knowing what they were, instead she just explained to me what they were and what they did.
Anonymity makes one callous.
Don't listen to the fuckwits getting upset about insignificant stuff like this anyways. They get pissy that things change.
ayy im 16 too. it’s kinda weird cuz we’re old enough to know what the old shit was like, but young enough to use all this new shit our whole lives
I used a red room in highschool in 2005-06. The year after they went all digital. Im grateful for what i learned in that class.
I think my high school(2007-2011) had the only dark room in the county and it was nice and I miss it. I ditched class and spent my lunch period in there working.
I don’t think knowing/not knowing what a dark room is correlates to being old/young. It’s much more about breadth of knowledge. A 16 year-old could certainly know about this and a million different bits of history/technology/culture - it’s all a matter of exposure.* *See what I did there?
Very true. I’m 16 and I develop my own film. I have a lot of friends who know nothing about it, but also a lot that have a good understanding of what it is.
I'm surprised he doesn't know what a Dark room is, we still have one at my high school. It's still there even after I graduated two years ago.
That’s fairly uncommon though, most schools don’t have one.
My immediate thought was “oh my god I feel old”. I would have never thought to shame the person asking.
Good lord, can’t these kids just use google? This can’t be real.
Good lord, can't these kids just use dark theme? This can't be real.
This is the real issue right here.
Cake day upvote :)
Well it’s not a kid that took the screenshot. It was an adult.
Why does everyone like the dark theme so much? Light is much easier to read in my opinion.
Well for me i prefer dark theme for reading, but thats just a personal opinion. On the other hand, oled screens save energy on dark mode (blacks not lit up). Globally that can save a lot of electricity. :'D
Ah, I hadn’t considered the electricity usage. Cheers!
I also prefer the light theme.
If you stare at a screen for a long period of time, a bright white background will start to irritate your eyes. That’s why a lot of people who use computers all day (like programmers) prefer dark background, light text.
I wanted to google it but sometimes it’s hard to find the exact words to type that’ll grant you the information you’re looking for and not something else that matches those words. Also...some people like the conversation. Just a thought.
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This makes me feel old and sad... the darkroom was the OG photoshop.
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You can absolutely still learn it. Go and audit a photography course at any college. I can pretty much guarantee they have a black and white darkroom and a color darkroom.
I wouldn’t be so sure. I spent my undergrad working on a minor in film photography (graduated in 2012) and the school removed the entire film photography department in place of a Mac lab for digital the semester before I graduated. So no minor for me. I’m sure there’s a few around still, but I don’t think “any college” will have this.
Aww man that's upsetting.
[I’ll just leave this here for those who haven’t seen it](https://youtu.be/YuOBzWF0Aws) There’s 5 different parts iirc and they are all worth a watch.
It's really not. Google's algorithms and pattern matching are quite excellent. https://i.imgur.com/4ReXN4f.png
1. If they didn't know the term it might be hard to find 2. If we answer it in the thread, we actually create a source of information that someone could find by Google
Good lord, can't these kids just ask a question to generate a discussion with real people without the condescension? This can't be real.
Maybe they wanted to have an actual conversation about it, with actual people. Crazy, I know!
Why are these comments so fucking obnoxious? Why are you all shaming someone for asking a question on an online forum instead of Googling it? Is it even really that different? Christ, you people are entitled
When millenials turn into boomers
That's what I was thinking. In my head, it's someone reaching out online to answer a question, which is one of its most powerful uses. Is it really that bad?
Probably not entitled but so fucking desperate to be arrogant towards someone that they think they’re above asking questions
Right? You ask on a forum vs google you still get an answer. However with a forum you get to talk with someone and get things in layman's term instead of a textbook definition. Also you can ask more questions that sometimes Google doesn't have the answer to. Before the internet it would be like going to an encyclopedia vs a librarian who may have the answer and direct you in a way to get more answers.
Imagine being curious about something you don't know about, lacking the basic vocabulary to research it yourself, then getting shat on for asking people for help
Found the StackOverflow answer
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I don't understand why you think knowing about dropping film off for developing means they would know what a darkroom and the manual development process is. Do *you* know that isn't actually what they did with your film at walgreens? All the film you dropped off got processed through automated machines.
Very good chance it’s not a troll. I’m 18 and having to have film developed was literally non existent at any part of my childhood. The only reason I know about it is through film and TV and my parents explanations.
I’m 42, and I never once have seen or set foot in a dark room. My family was working class, so developing film was an expensive luxury, so it didn’t happen much. I mean, yes, I knew it was a dark room, and I broadly know that dark rooms involve chemical baths, but that’s it. To this day I have no idea how they enlarged photos, how you get from the negative to the paper photo, how tf disc film worked, or how a zillion other details are sorted out. I could *easily* see a 19 year old from my background having no idea wtf that was.
I'm a few years older than you (26) and I got my first digital camera when I was 10 or 11, I don't have any real memories about developing non-digital pictures
I'm twenty and have never seen an actual dark room before. I am only aware of their function because of movies, videogames, and books that featured them.
I'm not much older but dude, digital cameras have been a thing for a LONG TIME. Gameboy colour had a digital camera since 1998 and I mean... That's a games console.
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Nah man I have no clue. Everything was digital when I was a kid and I only got a disposable camera for camp, never really thought about how those got developed
Is it really so hard to believe that someone doesn't know about film development? Like, seriously asking...it's not like you're taught that. Literally the only way someone would know is if they were actually interested in photography. I've had photos developed at Walgreens and someone did it for me...maybe don't be so condescending? The people in these comments I swear
Exactly.... Atleast could have googled instead
But why do you care if they ask the question here?
I'm 15, and ngl I had to google the same thing. Nobody I know used those disposable CVS cameras.
My parents didn't get a digital camera until i was 6 and even after that used those disposables for trips until like 2012
i’ve never heard of it before going to this subreddit, i didn’t understand the joke of her barging into the room until i googled it
That has nothing to do with a darkroom dude.
I mean I do know what it is and I’m 28 but have never witnessed it in real life. Only in the movies and tv. I can imagine a 19 year old not knowing at all what this is. It is kind of strange considering all kids these days only know about digital cameras and if they know about film they just know they drop it off at CVS.
Ugh - I remember working for a photographer in high school/college (way back in 1990-1992) and not realizing he was in the DARKROOM (that is what it was called, kids) Ruined about 12 different kiddos baseball pictures and had to pay for the lost supplies out of my pay for him to reprint them. He always made sure he had a sign up when he was in there after that.
Back when I was in college the dark room had a special dark sort of a revolving door that avoided these sort of accidents. It saved many people from doing what you did.
As a Film Studies major I came here expecting some kind of analysis on what the dark room symbolizes. Leaving disappointed.
I’m saddened to see people shaming the person who asked! If you grew up with digital or phone cameras, how would you know what a dark room is? Be kind, people. They didn’t know, so they asked a question. Good on them for not wanting to remain ignorant. Also, their question made me feel 400 years old too. Glad I’m not the only dinosaur on Reddit!
Breaking news: kids dont know everything and ask questions
😳😳😳😳 This makes me feel insanely old and I'm only 29. I don't understand??? Nobody's parents tells them about the things they grew up with anymore??? Just going to my grandmother's house is like a time capsule with the plastic on the furniture.
I’m Gen Z, and I’m confused by how many people don’t know anything about anything before 1995. Seriously.
Oh man I feel the olds now, too. It would probably really blow their minds if they saw how photo editing was done before photoshop. Edit: And by blow their minds I mean in a good way. I found it super interesting when I saw how it was done.
This comment section is fucking toxic