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Re:A Supermarket Visit Brought Down the Soviet Union by ihatepython on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @12:51AM (#34409542)
What did they think when they went to Best Buy? (or maybe it was CompUSA, Radio Shack, or Circuit City back then)
Re:A Supermarket Visit Brought Down the Soviet Union by bane on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @01:12AM (#34409634)
I don't recall making it to an electronics store at the time. But I do remember talking a lot about the state of consumer tech. Most of what we talked about or showed them in our homes was familiar even if they didn't have this or that device at home. My host family for example had a color TV, a Dendy NES clone, and a boom box that my host brother endlessly played Metallica mix tapes on. I saw a few desktop computers in passing, but have no idea what they were. They shared a single phone with the entire apartment building. It sat outside and was red. I think it looks almost exactly like the phones in Half Life Alyx.

The Internet was very nascent at the time and they all seemed nonplussed by the BBS scene.

Re:A Supermarket Visit Brought Down the Soviet Union by aaronbrethorst on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @01:03AM (#34409591)
Best Buy has been around since the early 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Buy