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@m4ra I think about it a lot too. I was obsessed with The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story, The Last Unicorn, and my single random viewing of Galaxy Express 999. My kid watches *some* things on repeat, but not the way I did. Because she has 100s of choices where I only had 5.

@courtcan Hyperfocus on the obscure really wasn’t by choice most of the time in childhood, you just paid attention on what you had at hand. It really is a phenomenon that is fading away.

@m4ra

For me it was cable TV - specifically HBO.

I remember the day vividly. It was August 1978 in the afternoon an army of cable trucks and employees descended on our neighborhood. Employees went door-to-door signing-up customers. The crews then ran cables on all the poles and into the homes of those signed-up.

By 5PM a cable employee showed us how to use "the box". The very first thing I saw on cable was the cartoon "Jack and the Beanstalk" on HBO. The TV was on 24/7 for three weeks!

@jchaven Have you ever found that cartoon again somewhere like on YouTube or the Internet Archive?

@m4ra

No. I cannot even be sure of the exact title. I know it was animated and I can remember one scene, so I probably would know if I saw it.

I was paying more attention to TV without ANY static or distortion. This was a house that still had a B&W set "for the kids" and "the" '70s color TV in the living room.

@m4ra @artemis Our kid did that anyway. I think it’s just part of how kids like to experience art. (It was Ponyo in her case, followed by an expanded interest in Studio Ghibli.)

@Dataless @artemis True. As kids we are way more likely to completely get lost in things than as adults.

@m4ra@mastodon.social our family had a large bookshelf full of DVDs
from a young age I had it hammered into me to take care of the discs and put them in the case they came in, and not once have I scratched a disc to the point of not being able to read them

@m4ra@mastodon.social my dad also gave me his suitcase full of casette tapes that I could barely lift at that age and VHS tapes, I wish I still had them
oh well

@Jessica That’s so cool. 😎 I remember always transporting discs by placing my finger through the hole in the DVD to avoid getting my fingerprints on the reflective side.

@m4ra the most embarrassing thing was that I kept watching a Twix commercial that got taped with some obscure animated movie about dogs. The dog movie lost badly against the commercial (advertising the switch of the German brand name from Raider to Twix, which I still think was an unwise decision)

@kyonshi I honestly think some of the most impactful pieces of media I encountered as a child were ads and music videos. Sad in a way, but understandable. Ads are meant to leave an impression on your mind.