> I was not archived, nor was I searchable; things I said just disappeared forever.

> I had no influence and never disrupted anything. Strangers did not wish me a happy birthday or “Like” me. My personal brand was invisible.

> I did not take photos of myself, was not filtered

These things have always been happening; society just previously only had enough resources to set its scorching eye on politicians, nobles, and celebrities, in such a way as to force these thoughts and behaviors as reaction. Now there's enough attention for everybody, whether they like it or not.

> There was no surveillance of the streets.

Sure there was. It was just the unreliable and biased eye-witness kind of surveillance. One of the main purpose of the "city guard" was patrolling and noting down suspicious behavior.

Pre-globalization, many large cities would by default have border walls and border checks, where you'd have to state your purpose of visit and get your entry/exit recorded in a logbook.

Also, there were a lot of curfews. Curfew laws used to be pretty common, enabling city guards to treat anyone who is out at night as a de-facto criminal, enabling immediate search-and-seizure.

> News was not breaking

Sure it was. There was less space to fill, and so "breaking news" was limited to things of wider relevance, but it still happened, and still spread quickly. Even pre radio, there was "breaking news" in newspapers, pushed into the edition at the last minute. The whole value-prop of the telegraph was to spread "breaking news."

> The only content users generated was letters to the editor.

Depending on the era, you're forgetting about:

• Usenet

• Public-access television

• Call-in radio shows

• Open-participation scientific journals and "societies of letters"

Also, people could just sit down and write a book. Or, more likely, a memoir. The interesting ones would eventually get discovered and published, if perhaps post-humously.

> I rarely got to feel outraged by the words of people I’d never met.

They were there, in books/memoirs. People who read a lot of this generally made a career (in Literary Criticism) out of it.

> The only bingeing I did involved alcohol. I’d wait an entire week to watch the next episode.

You could have been binging serial novels!

> acquaintances never asked me to finance their ... back surgery

Sure they did; they likely did it through by presenting their problem to the local church, who then asked you to donate on their behalf. They're still doing that, in fact. GoFundMe is communal charity for non-religious people.

> I didn’t think about wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering, or the intricacies of romantic encounters.

People have been talking about all of these things (perhaps under different names) for centuries. They're hard to avoid, in fact, if you read the writings of "statesmen" of previous eras.

> My desk’s height did not adjust; I just sat in a chair and took it.

You could have just had one short desk and one tall one. Or a writing desk. Most people didn't, though. The real modern difference is a self-interested motivation to have good ergonomics.

> butts that were incapable of functioning as shelves.

Such butts certainly existed; they were just not evenly distributed. :)