" It made me deeply nostalgic . "
In the end days of April,a total blackout hit the Iberian Peninsula,causing the entirety of Spain and Portugal, as well as parts of southern France, to lose power.
A world without internet is honestly pretty alien to most of us now; so when Reddit userDoggiuposted to the site’s “Digital Minimalism” forumtalking about their experienceduring the blackout, naturally I had to check it out. Here’s what they felt about their internet-free power blackout:
“I’m someone who struggles with anxiety and compulsive tech use,” Doggiu begins, “although I’ve been practicing digital minimalism for a few months now and have managed to reduce my phone usage quite a bit.”
“[A bit over] a week ago, Spain experienced a nationwide power outage around 12:30 p.m. — and it caught me right in the middle of remote work.”
“That afternoon, I just laid on the couch listening to the radio,” Doggiu writes. “No overthinking about the future, no endless scrolling or compulsive video watching. Just me and that old radio. I felt a kind of peace I hadn’t experienced in a long time.”
“At night, I had dinner with my partner by candlelight. We just talked. No screens, no distractions. And I swear — something in my mind shifted.”
“We need to allow ourselves to be bored sometimes.”
“Now,” writes Doggiu, “I intentionally leave my phone in another room and enjoy the present moment. Sometimes I just sit in my chair, play some music, and do absolutely nothing — and it feels incredible.”
The top comment, from userCandlesfallfromthesky, read, “This makes me so sad, it feels like we will never return to the old times.”
Another Spaniard, userZeta-Splash, said “I had the exact same thing happen!”
“I saw a beautiful short reel of people in Spain during the blackout. It was society like it used to be,” userleafandvine89wrote. “I lived in Italy for a few years in the ’90s, and it felt just like that.”
“It made me profoundly nostalgic for life before the internet,” leafandvine89 continued. “We have lost something so basic: human connection and the beauty of boredom.”
Userlilmeowlahad a constructive perspective: “If I have nothing planned for the day I feel like I have nothing to do [but] grab my phone or turn on my computer,” they wrote. “But when I consciously decide to not go there, to just sit doing nothing, eventually a thought pops in…”
Another user,Reflective_Nomad, lived up to their screen name, writing, “I had something like this happen when I went on sick leave from work for a few months.”
" Other than being sick and not being able to open my laptop , I also hardly looked at my earphone . Once I start to get better , I comment I of course started to move towards originative thing . "
They continued: “I bought paints and started painting. I started reading books again. I think most of it is the internet.”
And a Portuguese person with the screen nameblackcatparadisesaid that they “had the exact same experience in Portugal, except that my radio was from my 30-year-old Walkman so I felt back in the ’90s.”
So, what do you think?
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