Neil deGrasse Tyson Waxes Nostalgic on His 57th Birthday With #WhenIWasYourAge

A rant on #WhenIWasYourAge follows…

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 5, 2015

To celebrate his 57th birthday, Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to have a bit of fun with the age-old adage, “When I Was Your Age…” with the #WhenIWasYourAge hashtag. While a lot of them offer some interesting, fresh perspective–and border on inspirational–many of them kind of just make you think, “Okay, uncle Tyson…”

Take the this one for example. Pretty interesting, right?

#WhenIWasYourAge We cured diseases and went to the Moon, benchmarking our usage of the word “Awesome.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2015

Oh, and this one is pretty gosh darn hilarious:

#WhenIWasYourAge A photograph lived inside your camera, cloaked in mystery for weeks, until you took exactly 35 more photos.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 5, 2015

Funny, no? And then this happens:

#WhenIWasYourAge Sauce was called Gravy.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2015

And you’re kind of just like, oh… uh, okay. You’re totally right. The last one was perhaps a bit condescending, but the man’s got a point, I guess?

#WhenIWasYourAge it was people who were smart, and phones that were dumb.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2015

You should check out his feed for his full “rant” (as some people are calling it), as there’s a ton of fun observations there to check out. Which, let’s be honest, if you’re not already following Tyson, what are you doing?

Not to be outdone, plenty of people joined in on the hashtag, tweeting their own When I Was Your Age stories.

#WhenIWasYourAge Neutrinos were massless and invariant.

— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) October 6, 2015

#WhenIWasYourAge This was the sexiest phone ever made. pic.twitter.com/7rTUA8Sicf

— Evan Leslie Jones (@Frodeziac) October 6, 2015

#WhenIWasYourAge the TV went off overnight. There was nothing but this image until the next morning. pic.twitter.com/zrA2irYz9q

— darksidedeb (@darksidedeb) October 6, 2015

#WhenIWasYourAge I was still just a rat in a cage

— Chum Pucker (@mattytalks) October 6, 2015

#WhenIWasYourAge I had to tread 7 miles up a hill in 5 foot deep snow BOTH WAYS to flash a smile at a boy. We didn’t have a snappychat.

— Arnessa (@Rrrrnessa) October 6, 2015

And of course, more than enough people reminding us that yes, when they were our age, there were older people complaining about the younger generation, too.

So, #wheniwasyourage, when people hectored me about what it was like when they were my age, I ignored them! You might do the same.

— John Scalzi (@scalzi) October 6, 2015

#wheniwasyourage old people complained about those damn kids too.

— Cat picture RT bot (@a_man_in_black) October 6, 2015

Thanks for the reminder, gang.

—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—

Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?