Retro return to a slow internet

AN eternal misconception is that young people are obsessed by cutting-edge modernity.

In fact they hate trendiness and prefer the outdated, the outmoded and the downright unhip because these make them feel adult and sophisticated – hence the popularity on Netflix of Friends, pictured, 14 years after the show ended, along with old children’s telly, Pot Noodles and vinyl records.

Now smartphones are being binned and replaced by old back-tobasics models, without wi-fi or cameras. The benefit here is that it disconnects you from WhatsApp, allowing you to connect with present surroundings.

I’m hoping this is true because this means I have some pretty hot wi-fi stuff to sell young people direct from my cupboard under the stairs, including vintage editions of every BT internet box, right back to the olden days of 2006. So if you’re stressed-out by internet life, let me introduce you to ‘dial-up’. That shrill tone and low twanging noise? That’s the sound of adventure – 1990s-style! Dial-up’s narrow broadband is the ultimate slow internet. Want to download a music album? Best set aside a week, hipster. And don’t worry about posting something daft on Twitter, because dialup takes all the speed and aggression out of social media. By the time your response is finally online, everyone will have forgotten what the argument was about. As a bonus, no one will call and grass you up to your mum for disrespecting her on Facebook because, thanks to dial-up, the only phone in the house is busy… RIDING high at the cinema box office this week is The Meg, about a gigantic prehistoric shark that is surprisingly good at sneaking up on people without them noticing. But why call it The Meg, which sounds like a movie about a new nanny, when everyone else is thinking ‘Ooooh – Jurassic Shark’?