A different fic....

[conuly]

"He took the Walkman out of his pocket and flipped through the songs in the cassette."

Oh, sweetie. That's... that's just not how cassette tapes work. Not even overseas. You fast forward or rewind - literally winding the tape again - and hope that your timing is amazing. I mean, with practice I guess you can get pretty good, but still.

*****************

An SMBC comic about Tolkein. Seems to be a theme for today.

Found in the Archives, Seldom Seen Photos From World War II

DHS changing immigration enforcement tactics amid negative polling

A year after Assad's fall, families of missing detainees languish without answers

Gunmen kill at least 11 people in attack on Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach

Comments

[greenwoodside]

I'm laughing, but -- omg! I feel so very old now.

Jumping through tracks on a cassette. Young people these days! I want to put an arm round their shoulders and tell 'em about the good old days when you'd be playing your music and there'd suddenly be a noise like a crocodile chewing a tarpaulin, and you'd open up the player and see all the cassette's guts unspooled and wrapped all round the compartment. Great times.

[elisi]

😂😂😂 Bless, they tried. If only they'd gone for a CD, they'd have been fine...

[maju]

Someone didn't do enough research.

Thinking about it, now it seems that in some ways cassettes were a step backward from records, because with records you could easily choose which song to play.

[sixbeforelunch]

Someone needs to make a community for cross-generational beta reading. "Can you read my story set in 1993?" "Sure if you can tell me if this fifteen year old character is behaving like an actual modern fifteen year old."

[carbonel]

The funny thing is, you could do that with an older and much worse but related device -- an 8-track cassette.

[the_siobhan]

Somebody recently posted a scene was supposed to be taking place in a high school in the 80s and there was a girl listening to a walkman and holding it like she was texting on it.

[shadowkat]

"He took the Walkman out of his pocket and flipped through the songs in the cassette."

LOL! Clearly whomever wrote this has never used or seen a Walkman in their lives, or a cassette.

Because you cannot fit a Walkman in your pocket effectively, well not unless it's a big pocket? I carried it around my neck or in a bag. Maybe a coat pocket.

Also, yep, rewind the cassette. Be nice if we could have flipped through it - but nope. That's a cell phone MP3 player, not a Walkman with a cassette.

I just read the comments, I feel old now. I remember 8 track tapes, tape players, walkmans, record players, CD players....and am amazed that there are people out there who have no idea how a walkman and a cassette player works.

[chez_jae]

*titters*

Old-school tech is so complicated. LOL!

[calimac]

I can't believe it. It's spelled right in the comic to which you link, and yet you still get it wrong.

[amado1]

I love seeing things like this in writing -- little bits that make you realize the author is much younger than the characters/setting they're writing. It usually makes me feel affectionate instead of like, rolling my eyes or what have you, but when it comes to my OWN writing, I'm always so concerned that I'll unknowingly walk into a mistake like this and people 20-30 years older than me will read it and go, "what the fuck..." XD

[glaurung]

Pedant note: tape players had little 3 digit counters on them, specifically so you could note the position of each song on the tape (and its duration) in counter digits, allowing you to fast forward/rewind to a specific song on the tape by keeping track of the numbers on the counter. No one I knew did this, but that is what the counter was for.

[minoanmiss]

*snicker*