What the Internet used to be like

[Queen Michael]

Remember what the Internet was like in the nineties?

You had to wait forever every time a picture was loading.

There'd be lots of pointless sites like "Janice's homepage" where people would post a picture of themselves and their family with some text like "Hi! I'm Janice Carter. I live in Phoenix, Arizona. I like to.." and so on, and it was never really clear who was supposed to visit those sites.

You had to ask someone if there was any important phonecall they were waiting for before you could connect to the 'net. And every time they wanted to call, you had to disconnect again.

You'd make sure to never meet someone you got to know on the web IRL. Never ever. At all.

Swedish newspaper Expressen, which is kind of like a Swedish The Sun without the page-three girls, had a headline saying "How to find the best erotic adresses on the Internet! IT expert Petra, 26, shares her hottest tips." They'd never have one like that now, partly because they couldn't get away with it now (and I don't know how they did it then, if they did) but also because the porn is so specialized. It's about finding a site specializing in your particular fetish nowadays.


Let's reminisce! Tell me about what the World Wide Web used to be like in the old days where adding the word "cyber" to a noun was not only done by your grandpa!

 

[Innegativeion]

ALL OF MY HATRED

so.

much.

teeth gnashing.

 

[emeraldrafael]

There was a lot more porn and advertising on it.

Oh and it was slow. and I remember if you had it in my area you were something of the rich kid who got everything cause not everyone got it all at once.

 

[Queen Michael]

There was a lot more porn and advertising on it.

Oh and it was slow. and I remember if you had it in my area you were something of the rich kid who got everything cause not everyone got it all at once.

More porn? Do you mean that a bigger percentage of Internet sites were porn sites? Because the number of porn sites must have been smaller.

 

[2fish]

Remember what the Internet was like in the nineties?

You had to wait forever every time a picture was loading.

There'd be lots of pointless sites like "Janice's homepage" where people would post a picture of themselves and their family with some text like "Hi! I'm Janice Carter. I live in Phoenix, Arizona. I like to.." and so on, and it was never really clear who was supposed to visit those sites.

You'd make sure to never meet someone you got to know on the web IRL.


Let's reminisce! Tell me about what the World Wide Web used to be like in the old days where adding the word "cyber" to a noun was not only done by your grandpa!

You remeber my website!

No what I remember most is
Also all the suspect websites I had to browse to find fixes. I do miss the porn popups that would appear right as my parents walked by.


Dear ninja, ALL OF MY HATE!

 

[Yomandude]

Wow...
...suddenly I feel so young.
Thanks for this thread, OP.

 

[Innegativeion]

No what I remember most is

It sounds like a room full of confused robots doing REALLY kinky shit.

 

[emeraldrafael]

There was a lot more porn and advertising on it.

Oh and it was slow. and I remember if you had it in my area you were something of the rich kid who got everything cause not everyone got it all at once.

More porn? Do you mean that a bigger percentage of Internet sites were porn sites? Because the number of porn sites must have been smaller.

If I remember it was a higher %.

 

[2fish]

No what I remember most is

It sounds like a room full of confused robots doing REALLY kinky shit.

Yeah it did sound fun, but I wanted to skip the long videos also,

Dear ninja, ALL OF MY HATE!

 

[Innegativeion]

People weren't getting paid to talk about how much they hate this one thing or love this other.

 

[Duffeknol]

I remember TV shows first discovering the net, and trying to read off their HUGE urls from the prompter made for some absolutely hilarious moments.

http://www.something.com/broadcaster/productioncompany/showyou'rewatchingrightnow/page/home/website.html

 

[Saltyk]

Well, there was stuff like Hamster Dance. Wasn't that the first internet meme? Like before there was even a term for it.

 

[Saltyk]

ALL OF MY HATRED

so.

much.

teeth gnashing.

You know what the worst part is? I learned recently that the whole noise was unnecessary. It wasn't actually the sound of connecting to the internet. There was no sound. Someone just though we needed to hear something. Isn't that awesome?

 

[Duffeknol]

Also I remember Dickcream.com, home of some of the first moving .gifs with fitting (or unfitting) music playing in the background, later perfected (or ruined, matter of perspective) by YTMND.

Or when Newgrounds.com was super popular because it had a game in which you could kill Britney Spears or the Teletubbies.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I remember the AOL chat rooms, that's where I spent most of my time.

Now that I think about it, it was really dangerous territory, who knows what kind of wackos I was talking to, especially in the Pokemon RP rooms.

Edit: Oh yes and I remember the Hamster Dance.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

ALL OF MY HATRED

so.

much.

teeth gnashing.

You think you hate it? I worked in tech support for an ISP way back then (yay being old). As soon as the video started playing, my brain instinctively tried to figure out what settings the modem was using and what speed it was connecting at just from the sounds it was making. I actually bit the speaker off my modem at home because it was more satisfying than just using the AT command to disable it. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

ALL OF MY HATRED

so.

much.

teeth gnashing.

This is how I remember the early internet. I hate that sound soooooo so much.

I was too young so I didn't go online very much at all. 2006-2007 is when I started going on Youtube/Facebook a lot and then in 2009 I joined here.

Yup, I missed out a lot of the nineties internet shenanigans. Mostly because I was 9 in the year 2000 :/

 

[Chemical Alia]

I think I got the internet in 1995, when I was 13, I think. I used the AOL interface for the first few years, mostly to check the TV Guide for Eek the Cat episode listings and printing out pictures of Leslie Nielson in Dracula: Dead and Loving it.