Don't forget all the board gamers also have big dumb noses and bad breath! I mean, you don't know any of them that don't, right?

Should be pretty easy to find the manual, assuming the model's right?
Uhhuh... And seeing as the old phones still worked when the power was down and these don't, the landline itself would work as a backup for a contact method in case of emergency, and also a way to get information about or report power outages, but putting such a phone on it defeats that purpose. ... And when they had an actual middle button. I still wish mice would have one again, and have the scroll wheel between it and the right button, so you can properly middle click without accidentally scrolling sometimes. Keeps pissing me off when I do that, so keep wishing for that basically ever since scroll wheels appeared.

That isn't the type of kit I'm talking about.
I certainly don't, however that wasn't a connection I would have ever made. If those are traits that you ascribe to that particular demographic, then you know some oddly specific groups of people.

You're one person, so your personal experiences are 100% meaningless on a broad scale. Especially this year; board game sales have skyrocketed since March. But even before then, board game sales have been increasing steadily for a while (e.g. board game cafés are a rising trend globally), and were estimated to hit $21 billion by 2025. That's some "niche", huh?

Ah, see? You actually can call people using a single button push, even with your phone! :)

Why not? I mean, you already draw your conclusions from thin air and against all reality.

Ha yes.

I also remember tape to tape recording. Had one mixtape with the news playing in the background as the two tape players were just pushed together (speaker to mic)!

Oh, so you come from a rich family? A floppy disk puncher was pure luxury. We had to make do with nail scissors.

;-)
I gave up counting at some point. But it were a lot of wrecked Joysticks.
But then the Competition Pro came along, and things got better. I never managed to wreck one of these.

Well I had Commodore 166 in East Germany before the fall of the wall. Privileged kid ;-)

Yeah I too wrecked a lot more. But those stayed in my mind: "RUUNNN YOU SON OF BI...." *crack*... :-D

I also had a Competition Pro, and it's indestructible. But I hated the thing. Holding it gave me cramps in my hands, no trigger button, no autofire switch...

The lack of an autofire button could be circumvented with a little DIY knowledge: http://pitsch.de/stuff/magicdisk64/8712_dauerfeuer/MD8712_dauerfeuer.pdf

Yup, stuff like that was even sold (mail order) :-)
Still preferred my Quickshot Pro and others (until the next *crack*).

Oh, the irony.

And skyrocketed where exactly? Any sources with figures on actual numbers of people playing then vs now? Making the claim that board games are more popular now than ever before seems suspect.
Because not everyone shares your rather unique experience of knowing large numbers of board gamers with 'big dumb noses and bad breath'. It seems like that should be perfectly clear, but perhaps I am overestimating your comprehension abilities.

I won'pretend to know what this is about, but...board games are a huge market nowadays.
Much bigger then they have been ever before.

Edit: https://www.statista.com/statistics/829285/global-board-games-market-value/

Board games are huge now. There are stores selling nothing but board games (and I mean actuall birck-and-mortart stores). There are pubs devoted to board games with huge collections of games to be played by the customers. There's plenty of channels on YT reviewing board games, talking about board game history, even streaming people playing board games. But hey, Serren says board games are dead so they must be :D