Chris Pratt Schooled Millie Bobby Brown On What It Was Like To Take A Polaroid 'Selfie' In The Nineties, And The Gen Xer In Me Feels So Old

In the new Netflix movie The Electric State we will see an alternate version of the 1990s where sentient robots have become common and a war between them and humanity has been waged. The actual 1990s were quite a bit different, I know I was there, but I’m not sure I realized quite how long ago they were until I saw Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown take a picture with a Polaroid camera.

In a new video on Instagram to promote The Electric State Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt compare the technology of the 1990s to today. Basically, that means comparing an entire table full of ‘90s electronics to a modern smartphone. It’s hilarious, but also much, like Chris Pratt, I am feeling very, very, old right now.

I am, according to Google, two years older than Chris Pratt, so I have a keen understanding of just what he’s dealing with in this video. We didn’t have the word “selfie” at the time, but we took pictures of ourselves with a camera. The process was usually awkward, but more importantly, you could never be entirely sure you had the camera aimed just right, and if you missed the shot, you wasted your limited amount of film.

And while I totally get that things like the Walkman or the answering machine are not in common usage anymore, what really blows me away and makes me realize how much time has passed is that Millie Bobby Brown doesn’t even know what they are. I would think that they had enough of a cultural footprint to be recognizable, but apparently not. I mean, didn't Millie Bobby Brown see the Guardians of the Galaxy movies? Chris Pratt knows the Walkman well.

There are some great '90s movies that have survived the test of time that one would expect a lot of people to have seen even if they didn't live through the decade. A bunch of these things were also around in the '80s and you'd think being a member of the Stranger Things cast would have also exposed her to some of this.

Still, it’s good that the younger generations understand the pain that we had to go through. Having to fast-forward or rewind a cassette tape in order to listen to your favorite song was just as terrible as it seems. We hated it at the time, we just didn’t know there was another option. The invention of the compact disc, never mind streaming, was a game changer in itself.

My favorite bit has to be Chris Pratt comparing an answering machine's outgoing message to Instagram because, in the era before social media, it was one of the few ways one could entertain and self-express in a public fashion. I had never made that connection, but I absolutely understand it now.

The Electric State promises to be a strange combination of ‘90s nostalgia combined with advanced technology that not only didn’t exist then but doesn’t exist today. It should be fun, even if it may also make some members of the audience feel absolutely ancient.

The Electric State is available with a Netflix subscription starting March 14.