I was talking to a couple of friends the other day about those odd few years where it became normal to pull out and take with you either your whole car radio or latterly the front panel of your radio.
Strange times, and then it suddenly stopped being a thing.
It was a brief period where many people wanted a feature (usually playing CDs) that was not available on the installed unit. You may have also noticed the market for new aftermarket car stereos suddenly rose, and then collapsed.
These days, it’s all about adapters.
Many aftermarket radios still support that detachable face feature!
The stock radio in my 1999 model year car had a couple buttons that were removable (instead of the entire face, but it disabled the radio just the same). But no one was stealing stock Ford radios, as far as I know.
Climate controls, navigation, and other vehicle settings are now in the central touchscreen display. This makes the radio more of a command center, a 3rd party stereo would not be able to integrate with all the functions.
Removable panels were once a deterrent against theft, modern vehicle security systems and the overall integration of the stereo into the car’s electronics have made them less necessary.
Millennials and younger won’t understand this comic
I’m a 45 year old millennial, I knew what it meant. Maybe the youngest millennials won’t know?
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Then according to what i found on most websites, you’re gen x, not millennial, or at most you’re just very barely millennial
I had maintained that I was Gen X for the majority of my life, but it has become common to say 1980 is millennial as of about 10 years ago. And honestly, I don’t fit into the Gen X mentality anyhow.
But this topic is unrelated to mentality, it’s only related to chronological age
I’ve got no skin in the game on debating the older cap for millennials, but the agreed upon criteria for my social group for younger millennials is “Where you able to remember 9/11 as a kid?”
Yeah that’s a pretty good marker, the shared trauma response had a serious effect. Gens Z and Alpha really just grew up in the new world created as the political response and I hope they don’t have to have a similar shared trauma like we did, though maybe COVID qualifies.
Isn’t it though? We mostly group people into generations because of the trends of the mentality of those people. Every time we talk “millennials do <this>” or “gen alpha is failing <this>” isn’t because of their age, it’s because of a shift of mentality.
I do get what you’re saying but that’s just not the full reality. But also “most sites” listing millennials as starting at 1981 doesn’t take into account that social media has basically changed that definition. Imagine that I considered myself Gen X for over 30 years and then I start getting called a millennial for the next 10, and that I do fit in better as millennial anyhow. Would you still fight that fight because of the original definitions? Generations of people have something of an ebb and flow to them, especially on the fringe years.
This is about if you remember a thing that happened at a specific time in history. None of what you wrote applies to that. It’s literally just if you were alive and aware at the time when car radios were frequently being stolen. As i said previously, you’re either gen x or just very barely a millennial.
I’m several years younger than him, and even my little brother who is several years younger than me but still a millenial, and even he had a removable panel on his Peugeot.
Hell, even my little sister who is Gen Z, probably remembers those from our cars and hell, prolly eveb had a removable stereo in her ~1999 car.
Like what the hell are you talking about with this shit “millennials won’t remember carstereos”.
Shieet it was practically a common weekend activity to go and smash car windows and get yourself a new stereo on the weekend. That’s why it was so essential to have a removable panel so no-one would smash your windows. I, ofc, never participated in any groups doing anything illegal. Oh no wait I definitely can’t be charged anymore, so, yes, I did even participate one time. It was quite exciting but I feel sorry for the poor sod who’s window we broke and stereo we stole.
Eh so be it. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on both where that line stands and what it means to be in a specific generation tbh. Either way, I get your point and yes someone even just maybe 5 years younger might not know what this comic is even about.
Happy Turkeypocalypse.
Now it’s an AT-AT.
