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Kevin Bacon Tries to Explain Dating in the ’80s to Millennials: Star Talks Rubik’s Cube, White Pages, and the Cold War in Viral Video

Kevin Bacon‘s latest cause? ’80s awareness! The uber-connected Footloose actor stars in a new PSA-style campaign for Mashable, in which he attempts to explain the 1980s to anyone born after the year 1985 because these younger folks (a.k.a. millennials) have “no idea how hard life was.”

“Awareness of ’80s culture and technology has been in a significant decline,” says Bacon in the clip uploaded to YouTube Monday, Mar. 10. “Especially amongst a certain demographic… I’m talking to you millennials,” he adds as he points to the camera.

Related: PHOTOS: '80s hunks -- now and then!

“If I was too shy to ask a girl out, there was no ‘Okay Twinder,'” Bacon continues. “I went to the White Pages — Google it — and called her house.”

“Then you had to make small talk with her mom for like, 20 minutes, before Alicia even came to the front,” the actor (who has at least 55 film credits to his name) reveals in the funny clip. “And let me tell you, when she turns down your invitation to Sbarro’s, you can’t just swipe away the hurt,” he gripes of today’s dating app.

(Luckily, Bacon found his match in actress Kyra Sedgwick with whom he has two millennial-aged children, Travis, 24 and Sosie, 21.)

Related: PHOTOS: Famous celebrity families

“You want to know my favorite app?” Bacon retorts. “Rubik’s Cube.” (The 3D puzzle game was wildly popular in the 1980s after a Hungarian architecture professor invented it back in 1974.)

kevin bacon

Bacon then goes on to tell a sob story about his time living in the American suburbs during “a little thing called the Cold War.” He adds, “You couldn’t even skateboard to a Blockbuster without getting nuked.”

Related: PHOTOS: '80s style

The video camera eventually shifts away from Bacon to the wall, which the actor immediately notices. “Hey, hey. I’m trying to make a point here. You guys can’t pay attention for more than two minutes?” he says, clearly mocking Millennials’ notoriously short attention spans.

He then storms out from the room only to encounter a line of folks holding their smart phones outside. “You people will never know the comfort of parachute pants,” he scoffs.

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