technology Memories from the old days of the Internet

[Pripyat Pony 2,608]

To clarify, I'm thirty seven years old. I remember the days before the internet was even invented, as well as the early days. Today, kids take super speed internet and zillions of websites for granted. So people of a certain age, what are your memories from the early days of the 'net? Here are some of mine:

 

* Buzz-bong-buzz-bong-brrrrrrrrr... ah, the sound of dial-up. One of the most frustrating noises ever that you were forced to listen to as you waited ages for the internet to load up. Oh yeah, and if someone was on the phone at the time, forget it. You either yelled at your brother/sister to get off the phone or you waited til the line was free.

 

* Downloads that used to take hours. I used to leave the computer chugging away, downloading something, and go and get some lunch. Of course, making sure that no-one was likely to come inside the study and touch the computer or use the landline (see above). I'd also read a book waiting for pages to come up on the screen. Thank goodness for the invention of broadband so we no longer have to waste hours of our lives that we'll never get back waiting for pages to load.

 

* No social media sites; it was message boards all the way, and they were basic as hell. No fancy backgrounds or smilies, just the bare bones. Using chatrooms was the closest we got to social media, and they were always full of creepers and spammers. O_o

 

* Regarding message boards... most were like the Wild West compared to how they are now. For example, one I used to go on was completely out of control with inactive mods and an admin who didn't care. All the users used to flame each other constantly, with an occasional spam or nasty pic posted for a change. That was the worst forum I went on, but most were similar, with only an occasional one that had mods and admins who tried to keep order.

 

Anyone else have anything else?

 

 

[Member Berry 1,217]

 

Damn Limewire What a dodgy app that was. 

[Tropico 226]

 

 

Regarding message boards... most were like the Wild West compared to how they are now. For example, one I used to go on was completely out of control with inactive mods and an admin who didn't care. All the users used to flame each other constantly, with an occasional spam or nasty pic posted for a change. That was the worst forum I went on, but most were similar, with only an occasional one that had mods and admins who tried to keep order.  

 

 

Interesting to know that. I though that flamming/trolling internet culture was kinda recent but i see its so much older than i though xD

 

I had internet access at home pretty late, like at 2005. so my early internet memories is this

 

 

and the trend was having nicknames like this •?((¯°·._.• ţя๏ρɨȼ๏ •._.·°¯))؟• 

[Cirrus. 1,089]

I'm 28 and remember Dial-up. If someone was on the phone when you tried to log on you could hear the call through the modem. Next you could hear them (through the modem speaker) yelling at you that they were still on the phone. I don't miss those days.

 

It's crazy how things have progressed in 15 years. I just set up a Roku stick for my parents at their house so they can use Netflix. It's kind of crazy to think that it has wi-fi on board and can process 1080p video and is the size of a flash drive. 15 years ago having a DVD drive that could play moves on your computer was still kind of a big deal.

 

It really makes me wonder what kind of crazy tiny electronics government agencies like the CIA has if stuff like the Roku has been in the CONSUMER market for a few years already...

 

 

Oh- and my AOL email is still my main e-mail.

 

Luckily I was smart enough to make several e-mails that were not tied to my ISP.

 

• My original AOL one is for important stuff.
• I have a yahoo e-mail for stuff I kind of care about
• Then I have a G-mail account for stuff that requires an e-mail that I know will be spammy.

Edited February 12, 2017 by Cirrus.

[Pripyat Pony 2,608]

 

 

Interesting to know that. I though that flamming/trolling internet culture was kinda recent but i see its so much older than i though xD

 

I had internet access at home pretty late, like at 2005. so my early internet memories is this

 

 

and the trend was having nicknames like this •?((¯°·._.• ţя๏ρɨȼ๏ •._.·°¯))؟• 

 

Lol, I remember msn messenger. XD I used to go on it all the time!

 

And yeah, trolling is as old as the net itself. Cept before, it was fairly harmless rather than the cyber bully fest it is now; most trolls just posted obscene photos and were ignored. Flaming between users was so common, had trolls done this, they would have just blended in with the general chaos.

[ChocolateCrane 156]

I miss /b/ back in 04'-06'; you know, back when members would go out of their way to entertain in creative ways. I completely stopped using 4chan around mid 2009, due to how intolerably cringeworthy things got. Robot Unicorn Attack and the associated "Harmony" day was one of the last things that gave me hope for 4chan to return to greatness once again (as I would lurk every few months to see if things were improving). Unfortunately, RUA didn't exactly provide ENOUGH content to shift 4chan from it's never ending descent into a wasteland entirely devoid of lulz.

 

With the advent of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the huge influence it had on 4chan, I thought there was potential for a last minute turnaround. FiM contained so many of the elements that made Robot Unicorn Attack excel in promoting the old /b/tard mentality back to the community. In fact, FiM COULD have been the perfect savior of the internet culture in question, as it not only provided the elements found in RUA, BUT it also supplied both ample exploitability of innocent source material (ala Lazy Town) and, perhaps most importantly a HUGE amount of continuously flowing content.

 

Alas, instead of promoting the old internet culture I held so dear to my heart, FiM effectively became the "cement over the grave of the Internet". Endless cringeworthy attempts at memes, an extremely easily trolled community of "bronies" who would rather complain and weep about the hate they received instead of exploiting the haters to their own advantage..... it just left me shaking my head to myself in equal parts shame and soul-crushing disappointment. It is extremely sad that things turned out this way, especially since, in my honest opinion, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has been getting progressively better and better since its inception.

[Envy 6,162]

Lol, I remember msn messenger. XD I used to go on it all the time!

 

And yeah, trolling is as old as the net itself. Cept before, it was fairly harmless rather than the cyber bully fest it is now; most trolls just posted obscene photos and were ignored. Flaming between users was so common, had trolls done this, they would have just blended in with the general chaos.

 

I don't know.... If you ask me, on the forums I went to in the early and mid 00s, "troll" was a word that had an actual meaning. Trolls were members who did nothing but harass other members. They were blatant about it. They were notorious. We knew to look the other way.

 

Nowadays the word 'troll' gets thrown around like nothing. I've been called a troll countless times for posting something disagreeable, even though it is what I really feel. Funny, now it is a term without meaning, just thrown around when someone childish gets to the point where they have no arguments to bring to the table against someone anymore.

 

I agree with what you said in the topic, though. Forums were brutal back in the mid 00s. Flaming is another word that has completely lost its meaning. It's followed a very similar route: *individual sees a debate where either they feel they're above it, or their side is losing* "Such a flame war!"

 

Lol. NO. I got caught in these a decade ago and they were actually mean. Like tear apart everyone and everything about them, like they're terrible people with no value. Nowadays flaming is just disagreement. Kids these days know nothing. lol

[BlueStreak98 828]

I had dial-up, MSN, AIM, all the fun ones. I used to frequent several forums (like this one, but with fewer ponies) which I suppose is why I still like forums today. Message boards were a liiiiitle before my time.

[Miss Eli the Awkward 29]

I love that we have such advanced technology now and I absolutely adore the internet. I was young when computer and the internet came out, we were learning computers in elementary school. However, I do remember the horrible wait times with dial up and would get so frustrated I would give up trying to do anything! It's funny how the internet was so slow at peoples houses but the school computers were considerably faster...

 

Nowadays I don't think I could live without the internet. You "meet" amazing people in different places that are amazing and hilarious. Most anyone I know are so dull and predictable but the "people of the internet" are so funny!

[Ganondorf8 11,310]

I'm 34 and I remember the days before the online world practically took over people's lives. Those were actually good days when modern conveniences weren't a thing though now it's impossible to go back to those times.

 

I remember when my family first got our own computer back in 2000. It was the latest model at the time though it quickly became outdated within the next month as superior hardware was released and at a much cheaper price. I also remember how obsessed I was with printing images off the internet. I printed them off in a super-sized manner that wasted all of the ink within the span of my month. My dad wasn't very happy with me that day.

[SONICchaos 824]

What I remember from my youth

 

 

 

 

 

[Oleks 1,993]

In the place where I lived when I was a kid/teen, very few people had Internet connection before mid-2000s. Those who did downloaded all the “cool stuff” that was then spread all over the town via CDs. Some people were into Skygrabbing, intercepting and pirating satellite Internet traffic and getting tons of various random things (from all kinds of adult content to all sorts of viruses). 
 

I remember getting my first modem. It was faulty, and I had to replug it every time before connecting to the Internet. I’ll never forget that noise…
 

 

Those were interesting times indeed. But I don’t regret that they are in the past – now everything is much faster, simpler and cooler.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,487]

The internet seemed so magical back in the day. I even had dial-up back in like...2003-04, and back then I was like "OHMAHGOOOOD" I just thought it was so cool yet I know I didn't appreciate it enough. I remember going to different gaming websites, the first one I ever went to was GamesRadar. Then I also remember anytime the phone would ring the connection would be halted entirely. First had AOL Online which was....exciting, then we later switched to Netzero and wow what a bad service that was.

[Tropico 226]

 

 

I also remember how obsessed I was with printing images off the internet. I printed them off in a super-sized manner that wasted all of the ink within the span of my month.

 

 

AHAHAHA i did the same but at small/medium size to put them on my notebooks and room xDD

 

i mostly printed zelda and inuyasha stuff xD

[Kamii 595]

It's been a while since I've been so interested in a topic!

First things first, I only had my first laptop in.. *does some random calculations* 2008. We had a family computer before then but with no internet what so ever. Used to play some old computer games on it, mostly for little kids. So, even if it was a little less than 10 years ago, I miss some old stuff (not as old as some of the posts here, but still old anyway).

 

The first time I found Wikipedia, Youtube and the only stupid social media site that was famous here (called Hi5) was quite amazing. Since I was still a kid, I spent my afternoons having fun just poking around, watching funny videos, learning about random things I loved and so on. I wasn't obsessed but I loved finding out so many different and unique things all over the internet.

 

Nowadays, most 5 year olds already have some kind of technology in their hands and by the time they are 10, they are either trolls or annoying babies, full of themselves.

@Tropico

I miss MSN... ;w; It was so much fun to annoy friends.
 

[Tropico 226]

 

 

I miss MSN... ;w; It was so much fun to annoy friends.

 

 

Me too! I liked more than nowdays message apps. The coolest boy was the one who had MSN PLUS with his colour nick and personalized emoticon gifs xDDDD

also i loved its two-player version of Minesweeper so much. imo it was so much better than the original one from windows

[Pripyat Pony 2,608]

Lol, I remember Minesweeper! Back then, the only games I could get on the computer were Solitaire, Minesweeper and Pinball. The only online game that I played on my crappy desktop was zOMG! on Gaia, which still lagged like crazy, and Runescape, which kept logging me out. Minesweeper annoyed me cuz I kept stepping on mines.

 

Oh, and for those of you who never experienced dial-up, here's the sound of dial-up in all its glory:

 

 

I also remember going to "Ask Jeeves" to find stuff, cuz Google didn't exist back then! Not to mention all the crappy amateur Geocities sites that abounded. I had one, but kept forgetting to update it and eventually abandoned it. It was pants anyway, what with all the blinding luminous font and seizure inducing flashing gifs.

[Tropico 226]

@@Pripyat Pony OHMYGOD THAT SOUND COMES FROM HELL ITSELF. SO CREEPY

 

woah changing from windows 95 and so with the Minesweeper to windows XP with that pinball was THE PINACLE OF VIDEOGAMES TO ME hahahaha that pinball was the future xD

 

 

also as a kid at computer class in school the computers had a "secret code" to unlock super mario bros typing the code at that MS-DOS program xD what a secret we had xD

Edited February 12, 2017 by Tropico

[Member Berry 1,217]

Not really internet related, more Windows related but who remembers this?

 

[Denim&Venöm 18,966]

Somewhere, I think I still have a CD to install a free trial run of America Online 8.0 

[Celtore 2,770]

I remember those days. I mostly used the internet back then to find pokemon cheats and gameshark codes. With many sites not offering the ability of visitors to contribute to their site's content, you had a lot of incredulous content like "mew is under the truck", "use the item finder in every square of seafoam islands to find the mist stone", or "beat the elite four 30 times in a row with a magikarp to get pikablu."

 

I also remember my first few memes being the llama song and "all your base." I also got to see the dancing CGI baby when my cousin visited when I was like 6 or 7. The ultimate showdown was my third

[Pripyat Pony 2,608]

Just remembered another thing; I used to be excited at getting new emails. XD Checking my inbox wasn't the chore it was today.

[Wingnut 6,991]

Yeah, I recall those sounds of dial up too.  The "boing, boing" was always my favorite part.    I stuck with dial up into the age of Youtube and, well, I'd have to leave a window open for a video to download.  It would take an hour for 6 to 10 minutes of video to load so I had to look at or do other things in the meantime.    I don't think the message boards of yesterday were so bad.  This forum is basically just a message board with better graphics.  I made quite a few friends through those and I'm still in touch with a few of them albeit on a very sporadic basis.  If I'm not mistaken, one of them is a fellow member here. 

Somewhere, I think I still have a CD to install a free trial run of America Online 8.0 

Back in 2010 when my then girlfriend and I moved to a new house, we must've found 6 or 7 of those CDs among my junk.  Every now and then she still teases me about it. 

[Pripyat Pony 2,608]

Well, the main message boards I went on back in the day were Metal Sludge and The Doll Palace. Polar opposites in theme, but both were equally chaotic. XD

[PiratePony 8,475]

90s internet was awesome. It was always worth the time. You had AOL which was the portal to the world. I really miss it sometimes.

 

Even with everything at your fingertips like it is now, that kind of small tight knit thing was awesome.