In an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring comedian Carrot Top, the conversation took an unexpectedly philosophical turn when discussing the 1980 made-for-TV movie “The Gambler,” starring Kenny Rogers.
What began as commentary on vintage entertainment evolved into a fascinating examination of how fundamentally different human existence was before the internet age.
While watching clips from a 1980 film, Rogan observed something that struck him as almost archaeological in nature. “There’s something about stuff that was created before the internet that’s so fascinating,” he noted. “It’s like an archaeological dig. Like you’re looking at the way people used to behave and talk before the internet.”
This observation led Rogan to articulate a provocative theory about pre-internet humanity. “Human beings from 1980 were like a different thing,” he explained. “Everybody would just leave the house. Everyone had a key. Nobody knew where anybody was at any given time. You left the house, you were gone. We didn’t even have answering machines yet.”
Carrot Top enthusiastically agreed, recalling his own experiences growing up in that era. The two comedians reflected on how people functioned without the constant connectivity that defines modern life.
There were no cell phones, no answering machines for much of the decade, and certainly no way to track anyone’s location or activities once they walked out the door.
“People in 1980 were essentially wild animals,” Rogan declared. “They were wild animals who had children. No one knew what was going on in the world. Everybody was completely uninformed.”
This wasn’t meant as an insult but rather as an observation about the radically different information landscape of that era. People’s understanding of current events was limited to evening news broadcasts, newspapers, and word of mouth. There was no 24-hour news cycle, no social media, no instant access to information from around the globe.
“You only knew the people in your neighborhood. You didn’t know anybody else,” Rogan continued. “There wasn’t even one-hundredth of the amount of famous people back then. There was a tiny amount of famous people. There was Elvis and a few other folks. There’s a few rock stars, a few comics.”
Carrot Top found this analysis compelling, noting how different it was to simply not be reachable. “There was no answering machine. They were just gone. You were wild,” he agreed, marveling at how people managed their lives with such limited communication technology.
Perhaps most remarkably, this state of disconnection was simply accepted as normal. “Everybody’s worried about Russia blowing us up and no one knew what was going on and everybody lived in bliss,” Rogan observed, despite the fact that the dominant cultural anxiety of the era was nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
