The Numa Numa Pill describes the almost irrational desire for and attraction to older or even deliberately inferior forms of technology. For example someone who is Numa Numa Pilled will deliberately watch content on a low resolution such as 240p even though they have higher resolutions available to them. They will either own a dumbphone or their smartphone will be the oldest and worst performing version available.

In a world obsessed with graphics and shiny tech-trinkets the Numa Numa Pill is a bold and defiant rejection of precisely this kind of technological avarice. It's a deliberate attempt to embrace slower, simpler and more comfy forms of tech. It's like taking a step bake, lying down in the grass and watching as the crowd seeks to surmount an surmountable and ever growing mountain of their own dissatisfaction and increasingly neurotic need for novelty.

How many Denpas have taken the Numa Numa Pill?

I've personally been watching everything on 480p for so long that I've actually gone months at a time completely forgetting that my default resolution was so low. I recently upgraded to 240p.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3B56SL7EOA

lol where I live it’s practically impossible to downgrade cause newer technology is cheaper and more readily available

I made an effort to use an old Windows CE handheld in bw and jammed it full (with a 2GB CF card in the slot) of music (22kHz 8bit WAV was the easiest to play), pictures (gif format in grayscale), and simplified copies of HTML pages (it has a browser, just a handheld one from 1998 lol).
I'd still be using it if it hadn't fallen and broke...

Writing stuff with no distractions in Pocket Word was nice, but the keyboard sucked. Still better than typing on a phone keyboard.

I did get it online a few times with a super jank setup involving a program designed to add serial internet access to Palm and WinCE devices, but the low amount of RAM and old browser meant that it was more of a curiosity (also, it would disconnect very easily). You needed WebOne installed on a computer too to get around https. Converting a curated selection of local pages ended up being more useful.

dealing with the spam filter was a pain posting this...

See my problem with people like this is if they think modern technology is bad, why stop at late 2000s? Why not go to the 90s and use cassette tapes and brick phones? Hell, let's go even further and use mainframes and green text terminals. Why stop there? Why not go to the telegraph? Surely the telegraph is slower and simpler than modern tech.

I can understand wanting to reduce distractions, but you can do that with modern tech as well by managing your time with distracting websites and games. Although in my case I have ADHD so I have issues with that, but meds have helped a bit with it.

Also I guess this post comes off as telling you to always buy the newest and best thing, but that's not true. y issue isn't with people using old tech, my issue is using tech that you know will be frustrating to use. I use a laptop from 2018 and it's perfectly fine for me, but if I got a 2012 laptop it would probably lag and be a pain to use. But a phone from 2024 and a phone from 2025, or even 2020, are basically the same experience, so in that case I agree people should think twice before upgrading.

I use an ink pen and paper to write. I've also begun memorizing stuff. I prefer lithographic printed books. I have one from the 30s. Generally, I prefer classical and old sources to live by too, instead of most modern authors and thinkers who are trashy. Why stop at old tech, sometimes old ideas were better too.

When it comes to modern tech, I use a PSP to listen to music. I miss the look and feel of old laptop keyboards. They just felt better.

>>4
Good point. Loving something because its old can be a problem. I'd say the spirit behind >>1 isn't bad, it just needs refining.

Spam filter is a pain

reading this thread on a phone running android 4

>>4
why not go further? a couple of reasons

a lot of it is attraction to a specific era
some of it is what level of inconvenience are you willing to put up with
and then some of it is just based on aesthetic reasons

also, self-managing an issue with distractions is hard
using a system that simply does not let you be as distracted really does help a lot

>>7

Most people don't have issues with distractions to the point that it effects their productivity. Sure you see a lot of people sdoomscroll all day but they probably get their work and hobbies done eventually. Also about 10% of people have ADHD, myself included, and that can seriously impact how well you can manage distraction. And I'm sure none of these "numa numa pilled" types don't have a game console or something around to distract themselves with anyway.

>>7

I guess what I'm saying is, if you're so disciplined that you can use old tech and not find another way to get distracted, then surely you could use new tech and also find a new way to get distracted.

>>7
>>9

Oops type, I meant then surely you could use new tech and also find a new way to NOT get distracted.

me seeing this on a hp ipaq 210

>>9
you probably could
but that's much less fun, and I suspect the real reason anyone would bother is for the fun of it

hell, even now, I'll fire up Windows 95 in PCem and type shit up in Word 95 there, or do something in Fast Tracker II
it's not like I can't just use LibreOffice or MilkyTracker, but fuck man, it's fun

going back to a modern desktop is as easy as it can be, but most of the reason I'll even bother is for the fun of it
installed a bunch of shit on it, but it's also emulating a 486/50 (partly because this laptop is 10 years old and a bit slow and PCem is very processor intensive to maintain full speed and I actually would like a new laptop but I'm cheap and don't actually need one)

On a related tangent, I used to have a bunch of fun doing Mac emulation with Basilisk II, although I ended up continuing to do it for a while for other reasons: running Word and Photoshop and other programs under Basilisk II was absurdly snappy compared to modern (at the time) programs.
Programs designed for a 68040 absolutely soared on my Pentium III laptop, even with the overhead of emulation. I also played a bunch of Marathon Infinity and Sim City 2000 under the Mac emulation, lol.
I don't think that quite counts as taking the "numa numa pill", that was more just when I realized just how slow software was getting over the years.

One of the things that worries me about gen-alpha is that they were literally born post-iphone.
Most zoomer Denpas seem to share a similar sentiment of having initially grown up just prior to things like smartphones, social media, and 24/7 instantly accessible content before at some point getting introduced to them and then finally either rebelling against or at the very least having some real discomfort with the role that said technologies play in their life and on their psychic.
Gen-alpha weren't smartphone kids, they were smartphones babies. They've never known what it was like not to have some kind of smart device in their hand.

I had a good couple of years when I was around 10 or 11 when I didn't have any internet at all. The only thing I had was a crt tv and an xbox.
There is a particular vibe to having separate devices for each function, console for games or dvds, a cdplayer or record deck for music.
Now everything is t=in the palm of your hand it kind of destroys your attention span and the ability to appreciate media or other stimuli.
>>13
I'm also worried about gen-Alpha, honestly it's like they don't know what to do with themselves. It's like they have been put through some clockwork orange style brainwashing.
I may be exaggerating but yeah

Haven’t yall watched videodrome, we’ve been fucked for a while now

>>14
Its funny how every device is now connected by content streaming. I had a PSP when I was a teen and I could listen to music files, play games, and access internet radio and RSS. But now all persons have handheld devices and they are always connected to youtube, twicth, social media 24/7/365. I hate Gen terms (they make no sense), but yeah the teens I see these days are totally brain dead cognitively destroyed. I know a guy who teaches basic programming in high school and he told me all his students do is use AI chatbots to answer every question and do every problem. They also can't be convinced the chatbot is wrong. If it says it, then it must be true.

>>15
shit, I've been meaning to and haven't

>>1
"Inferior" is subjective.
My Thinkpad X200 has less RAM or CPU power than newer laptops but it has a much, much more pleasant keyboard, a nub instead of an oversized touchpad and even a Wi-Fi toggle and a light on top. I'm fine with that, because I don't need more RAM or CPU power anyway.
My feature phone can't play gachashit or watch videos or anything but it's good enough for calls and is small and portable unlike most modern bricks. That's okay, I don't want to play or watch things on my phone anyway (it's a phone).
I watch videos on 360p-480p, or use audio only mode when listening to something, because it buffers faster and I scarcely need any higher quality. I always pick what I feel is superior to me, not what is inferior.

>>18
I believe more RAM and CPU speed and all that jazz is better, but the software is simply way worse. I really agreed with u0's "Graphics cards are bloat" video. With the computational power we currently have, we should be able to have 10000000 enemies fully spawned in at the same time in a video game with "good enough" graphics instead of the same boring vidya formula we have always had but with realistic graphics.

>>19
Based

>>19
there are a few reasons why it's "hard"
ya software is pretty shit, and it shows no signs of getting better, but it's hard to actually design things to work in parallel. the closest things we have to a C equivalent for parallel programming is like cuda, which... isn't really a C analog. in hardware design we constantly need to define parallel processes, manage timing, pipelining, etc. but in software we have to use static hardware that works specific ways, and then kludge in parallel communication modes using threads through sometimes but not always serial channels. it's a design nightmare, and so a lot of software takes a very conservative approach to multithreading, using it for a few background tasks or something.
for example with the 10000000 enemies idea, how do you divide it up. one thread will run too slowly, poor utilization of available hardware. so ok THREADMAX-1 might be good, but that's different on every pc, and so if each thread needs to handle some specific number of enemies then there will be less on less powerful machines. that might be fine, but it could also completely ruin the play experience. you could set a specific number of threads, and run them with some kind of priorities to keep things more or less fluid, but now you need to manage that, and that's extra overhead. the more threads you have the more context switching you need to do so you can't just throw a thread on each enemy.

and so because all this is terribly complicated and dubious in value many don't bother doing any of it. just throw it in the main loop and limit the spawns to some smaller number. clock out and go home to watch the latest star wars slop.

wish i could have a high end computer with the case being from old Fujitsu Siemens Scenic E620, best looking beige computer ive seen, paired with sun microsystems keyboard and mouse and the original fujitsu monitor that came with it, i would buy it as my christmas gift but idk how i would explain buying old computer over new clothes for the third time to mom.

apart from that I do think i will go through with my idea of getting myself a psvita 2000 model to watch media in bed with and all the games I had owned on my psp as kid, will also use to store my favorite music on.

>>22
Get the 1000 model. It’s just better overall and has a nicer screen.

>>21 Well it really depends on how you define enemy. If you mean just 10000000 moving around, then you can easily do that with an n body simulation, they are typically used in astrophysics simulations. But if you mean 10000000 fully modeled enemies with complex interactions and whatnot, then I guess not.

This site itself feels pretty retro.