Whenever someone has to highlight the fact that when they’re telling a story from 30 years ago or longer, that they ‘didn’t have smartphones’. Like yeah, I don’t expect someone from 1995 to have such a device and the closest things you’ve got were PDAs.
I just know it’s going to be some old boomer like story that’ll bore me.
Storytelling is about anticipation. Setting up the environment in which the narrative can unexpectedly take you somewhere.
When you next read anything, look at the mechanics of the process, what is revealed, when, how and why.