What would the Internet be like if dial up was still used

[Metallic Strings 185]

What would sites such as youtube, social networking sites such as Facebook, and the mlp forums be like if we all still used dial up Internet? Comment below.

For all I know, it would Be a FREAkING NIGHTMARE to watch YouTube!!!

[baba_booey 4,302]

It would probably be like this:

 

"Guys did you hear about the new Nintendo console?

I can't wait for the 3DS!"

[CaptainDoubloon 856]

The dial up noise still haunts me to this day.....>.>

[Justin_Case001 4,880]

It would probably be a kinder, gentler internet....because nobody would be on it.  Instead they would all be outside playing stickball and freeze tag in the sunshine, and white washing their picket fences and having picnics and catching frogs down at the bog, and relaxing a spell down at the ol' fishin hole.  Sounds nice.

[Midnight_Magic 72]

oh god, don't even joke like that, dial up was just so horrid! I almost tossed my old clunky computer through a window many times because of it...seriously never again! 

[Ziggy + Angel + Rain 11,302]

I used to play several MMOs on dial-up.  I remember only being able to move every few seconds when I entered heavily populated locations in RF Online. xD  I remember downloading por- uhhhhh...  Pork chop recipes with dial-up (good save, me).  It would take me an hour to download even a small...  Pork chop recipe...  And you couldn't even view any of the pork chop recipe beforehand without the recipe-gathering software threatening to freeze.  Once you finally DID have the full pork chop recipe, you kept it even if it was awful.  Because it took you an eternity to acquire.

[CC_Maud_Pie 6,431]

It'll just be very slow. And the sites we have will take hours to get on.

[Pinkie-Guy 563]

The web as we know it would have evolved differently if we were all still limited to 56k. There probably wouldn't be a YouTube or really any websites heavy on video. Pictures would be fewer and much lower resolution. Websites would be much leaner. HOWEVER, MLPForums would still exist. The idea behind forums date to before the world wide web existed, to the days of Bulletin Boards Systems (hence BBcode) and the early internet. Text is still easy to do on 56K, so all these conversations we're having would still happen. We just might be SOL if we couldn't get the broadcast because Netflix would certainly not exist. It would be a starker web, where we click to view images. I think we'd probably end up sharing a lot of ascii art. It's going back to Usenet.

Edited February 17, 2015 by Pinkie-Guy

[Envy 6,137]

I can't imagine that it would be anywhere near as big as it is today. Although truth be told I was getting obsessed with the internet even back when we had dial-up. I remember my mom telling me I had to get off because the phoneline was needed. >.<

 

Forums would still exist (as they very much did back then) along with resource sites, but I do not think that music or video streaming and and downloading would have ever really took off like it has. I'm shocked that IMing was even a big thing with dial-up.

[Jon C 229]

Gotta love that sound tho.

 

[Blackened 512]

It would be very inconvenient. If only there was some way to connect to the internet without an excessive...

 

Ah shit. Sorry guys, I have to get off the computer; my mum wants to use the phone. I'll finish this post later.

Edited March 15, 2015 by Blackened

[Scrubbed user 3,416]

I'd have to resort to print for my pork chop recipes.   

Edited February 17, 2015 by HayaBROsa

[TSD 86]

Cute, OP thinks YouTube would exist if we were still on D/U.

 

Rubbing one out would take forever. Seriously, back in the 28k/56k days it could take five minutes to load a page. An afternoon to DL a minute long QuickTime clip.

 

And pirating music? We're talking about 30 minutes per song on OG Napster.

 

You younguns don't know how good you have it.

[Wingnut 6,980]

Eeeeeeeeeeee EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!  Boing boing! Hssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

 

If you don't get it, listen to this (it's the same link Trashman posted):

 

 

Ah, what memories.    I actually stayed with dial up until 2009 or 2010.  Everything took like a minute or longer to load.  And Youtube?  Forget it.  And hour was needed to load a video lasting just a few minutes.  I have to give credit where it is due.  I had a lot of fun and made some very wonderful friends on old-fashioned internet.  But honestly I have no desire to go back to those days. 

[Samurai Equine 50,854]

Ah yes, I remember the days of Dail-Up. Back when Windows 95 and 98 were a thing...

 

Those days were horrible! I didn't know about Antivirus or Antispyware programs at first, and Norton was the only one available! There were no Free Antivirus programs.

 

But MAN is it a trip to dig up old images files from back in those days. My reaction to each one is always the same. "Wow. Those use to look so big back in the day. Why didn't anyone tell me how small they really were?"

[SUPERFOX5 387]

Waaay too slow.

 

I used to have this modem thing, where each time you wanted to access the internet, you would have to start this software and click the "Connect" button, sometimes it wouldn't work... X(

 

Now my internet automatically connects.

[Hidey 2,836]

It would be like my internet.

 

 

 

(this post was typed yesterday)

Edited February 18, 2015 by Pretend Horse

[AFK 89]

Everything would be text based and plain html.

Also I would say this fandom wouldn't exist at all!

 

Why? Because good luck downloading the show or acessing fanmade content with an old modem.

~haha

[VitalSpark 1,830]

Dial-up is still used. In many rural areas, ADSL and cable are not available, and 3G coverage is patchy at best. Ditto for many developing countries.

 

Large parts of the Internet are still very usable on slow connections:

•  Websites like Wikipedia, BBC News, eBay, most search engines, most web forums, many blogs, etc. They take longer to load of course, but not long enough to make them impractical to use. (Switching off images in your browser makes them load faster of course. Some poorly designed sites may be difficult to use without images loaded though.) 
• Email, but only small attachments
• Usenet, but not binary groups
• IRC
• Instant messaging
• Other low-bandwidth protocols like SSH and NTP.

 

 

I'm shocked that IMing was even a big thing with dial-up.

 

I've used IM over a 9.6k connection. It's still faster than SMS!

[Envy 6,137]

I've used IM over a 9.6k connection. It's still faster than SMS!

 

That's really not the issue. The issue is that, unlike high-speed internet, dial-up is a temporary connection. Back in the day when we all had dial-up, instant messaging was a matter of the rare event of both people being connected at the same time. You either had to pre-arrange it, or you both had to be frequently connected to the internet for long periods of time, which my parents did not allow, seeing as it took up the phone line.

 

One of my childhood best friends who had moved after fifth grade really wanted me to connect with her that way, but it never really worked with dial-up. Email was the way to go back then, because it did not require both users to be connected.

[VitalSpark 1,830]

 

 

That's really not the issue. The issue is that, unlike high-speed internet, dial-up is a temporary connection. Back in the day when we all had dial-up, instant messaging was a matter of the rare event of both people being connected at the same time.

 

Many IM networks allow you to send a message to a user who is not currently online. They receive the message once they log in. I know for sure that ICQ does/did.

[Envy 6,137]

Many IM networks allow you to send a message to a user who is not currently online. They receive the message once they log in. I know for sure that ICQ does/did.

 

Maybe now. But back in the early 2000s, when my parents started allowing me to get on the internet, that was not the case.

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,161]

Well, I'll tell ya-

 

*Five minutes later*

 

Okay, reconn-

 

*Five minutes later.*

 

Guys, this wa-

 

*Five minutes later.*

 

STAY CONNECTED YOU B-

 

*Five minutes later.*

 

 

To be fair, it was a lot more stable than that and I did a LOT with dialup back in the day, but some days...it was insufferable. >_<

 

[Rachychu 23]

Virgin Media recently decided to trial me a simulator of how dial up would feel nowadays (in other words: my internet was not working properly for no good reason for a little while)

 

 

It was unbearable. I couldn't even load youtube videos at less than 240p quality The upload speed was 0.6mb for crying out loud D:

Thankfully, after a week or so of this problem, just as I was about to phone them and complain (I was so busy at work it took me a while to get a chance!) it magically fixed itself. Till this day it is still a mystery to me but I am absolutely certain that if we were still on dial up now websites like youtube certainly wouldn't exist! Or any site with high visual content for that matter.