In today’s modern music landscape, where even the most obscure of recordings is usually only a few mouse clicks away and everything is streamlined into a few devices (iPhone? Check. Macbook? Check), the idea of having a separate device to handle music listening seems a little outdated.
To the Oughties generation, raised in a time when iPods were the norm and digital music is king, the notion of mixed media is positively archaic. Hammering that point home is a new video in which kids are shown what was once the great bastion of portable music listening: a walkman.
This excellent premise is the star of the latest episode of ‘Kids React To’, a YouTube series by TheFineBros as Rolling Stone reports, and considering their hilarious, non-plussed reactions of the youngsters – ranging from 5 to 13 years old – may as well have been shown a fossil or a lump of coal.
Most admit they have no idea what they’re looking at, let alone heard of the antiquated cassette medium they’re engineered for. One mistakes its for a clunky-looking mobile phone, others a “walkie-talkie” and a “boombox” before one smart cookie figures it out. Their attempts to operate the device are equally endearing; prodding at it like a touch pad, hitting random buttons, or 12-year-old Elle’s triumphant “I feel like I’m Indiana Jones, or something” when she finally opens the artefact.
The camera-happy children are further horrified by the walkman’s various accessories, gawking at the 80s-styled headphones, its rewind and fast-forward function, and the very idea that people could be seen in public with such bulky, dodgy-looking tech.
One child’s perceptive assessment perfectly summarises the whole thing: “I could not imagine living in your guys’ days with this.” (Oh but we did, child. And some of us want to stay stuck in those days). It’s all damn entertaining stuff… until you realise how old it makes you feel.
