7 Reasons Why I Believe 90s Internet Is Still Superior Than 10s Internet

[Klaatu51]

Well...I know most people will disagree, but it's still my opinion and only, so please respect it. Even if I was just a kid when 90s Internet was around, so I wasn't able to use it...seeing screenshots from it I was super impressed and I'm jelaous of people who were lucky enough to experience it.

1) Lack Of Social Media

In my honest opinion I believe Social Media destroyed internet by a huge degree. Now internet is just Social Media. Just e-mails could work fine in order to communicate with people online. So why Social Media are needed anyway? After all they prove to be more bad than good in the long run. Not to mention Social Media have spread their wings outside the internet as well. Even in food packages you will find a "follow/like us on Facebook".

2) No "Share It" Buttons

Well, thanks to Social Media, now we have to see in every site "share it" links. As I said on my 1st part everything revolves around Social Media,especially since the beginning of the last decade. Social Media started to gain more and more power since late 00s or so, and now they are everywhere. In just less than a decade. Only God knows how things are going to be in 10 years from now. Maybe we will literally be forced to use Social Media.

3) Nice simple, basic, yet futuristic (in some kind of way) backgrounds

Got proof for it.

1997-1998 Screenshots from various sites:

https://web.archive.org/web/19970605005803/https://www.angelfire.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/19980214192548/https://www.lycos.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/19981205025946/https://www.coca-cola.com/home.html

https://web.archive.org/web/19970607182147/https://www.pepsico.com/

And current screenshots from those sites above:

https://www.angelfire.lycos.com/

https://www.lycos.com/

https://www.coca-cola.com/global/glp.html

https://www.pepsico.com/

^Very overproduced aren't they? To the point they become tedious. Well it's a matter of taste though,but personally i prefer those "basic" early sites from above. They have a certain "charm" current sites don't.

See a related article by the way:

https://www.businessinsider.com/internet-screenshots-from-1996-2015-4

^Basic...but basic with a charm.

4) Internet wasn't mainstream yet

And this was a good thing. It was a priviledge among some millions around the world like 2 decades ago. In 00s it became mainstream,and now in 10s it's not only mainstream but essential.

And the more people get into something the worse it becomes. See video-games for example.

5) Trolls Were Less

See above why:

Easier Access = More People

More People = Bigger chances to "fish" shitty people among the bunch.

6) Fast Internet Prove To Be More Bad Than Good At The Long Run

What I mean is pretty simple. Sure fast internet is good to get info quicker and all...but on the other hand people have become addicts. It would be more difficult to become an addict if you were waiting for some page to load for a couple of minutes,and have to disconnect in order to use your phone since it would be disabled. It was more an "experience" than a "routine" as it is now.

7) The Whole Experience Sounds Magnificent

See first pic above. I still remember 56k modem sound but I was only just a 9-10 year old kid when I started to use internet, and of course my mom was standing above me everytime I had to use it, so I couldn't enjoy it at its fullest.

Well it was totally different. You had to sit in your computer chair, turn on your computer, connect, listen to this legendary "bzzzzzbzzzt" sound, and then have a smile on your face when you finally got connected. Then explore internet, and access those few available sites.

ALSO, one good thing here is since there were much less internet users by then, frequency of getting answers to your threads/posts (if in case you were member of some then forum) was much lower. Which means you had time to explore internet. Unlike now, when you get a response faster than light, so no time to explore internet as well.

Now it's just a routine as i said above. You can access internet even when you take a dump on your toilet's seat. It's not bad (dumping sessions have become better indeed) but it's not so "special"....you catch my drift don't you?

Hope one day we younger folks will be able to experience 90s internet once again but not from web.archive.org...but if someone made some "cult movement" (how can i put it?), and create some network where we could use old-school computers/modems and stuff like those...create internet sites in 90s style so we could get the full experience somehow...

^I approve my idea, and I'd definetely be a member of this cult movement if it ever existed. :)

[Jager66]

it had it's good aspects like you could print off the Original Anarchists cook book without ending up on some terrorist watch list.

You could download free music without any worries but it took fucking forever to get 1 song. Also free porn was hard to find and if you did find it the porn was really shitty or took a VERY long time to download.

It was kinda magical in a way too, like online dating wasn't full of narcissistic women and lazy men who just spam but there wasn't many people on those sites compared to now and there was still a personal feel when you were talking to someone online so it was less common for someone to be a total dick.

At least that's how I remember it, I wouldn't go back though!! The internet is waaay better now, I just wish people would stop trying to control and censor it.

[Klaatu51]

"You could download free music without any worries but it took fucking forever to get 1 song."

^indeed... but u could download da entire album when u r about to sleep... there u go... ;)

"Also free porn was hard to find and if you did find it the porn was really shitty or took a VERY long time to download."

^thought it was more free by then actually...

"It was kinda magical in a way too, like online dating wasn't full of narcissistic women and lazy men who just spam but there wasn't many people on those sites compared to now and there was still a personal feel when you were talking to someone online so it was less common for someone to be a total dick."

^see?

"At least that's how I remember it, I wouldn't go back though!! The internet is waaay better now, I just wish people would stop trying to control and censor it."

^do u like all those "share it" buttons and social-media being everywhere?

[Jager66]

"indeed... but u could download da entire album when u r about to sleep... there u go..."

Yup :) did that a lot.

"thought it was more free by then actually..."

I think it's relative, like the selection and quality of free porn now is crazy. In the city where I live all the porn shops have gone out of business because porn is so free now but in the 90's they were doing just fine still.

"See?"

Yeah there is some nostalgia of that time for sure, was a lot of fun in ways it isn't anymore. I also remember adults having the hardest time understanding computers and the internet so I had very little supervision heh. I literally know people who thought the CD Rom was a cup holder.

"do u like all those "share it" buttons and social-media being everywhere?"

I HATE!!! the social media aspect of everything now. I wish there was a way to remove all those stupid buttons from my internet experience to be honest, also don't like how every web site now requires you to create an account.

[Klaatu51]

" think it's relative, like the selection and quality of free porn now is crazy. In the city where I live all the porn shops have gone out of business because porn is so free now but in the 90's they were doing just fine still."

^makes sense... as well music stores... video-game shops... etc...

"Yeah there is some nostalgia of that time for sure, was a lot of fun in ways it isn't anymore. I also remember adults having the hardest time understanding computers and the internet so I had very little supervision heh. I literally know people who thought the CD Rom was a cup holder."

^i think average age of 90s internet user must've been like...16-30? i don't think 12-13 yo kiddos were much around da internet back then... right? not older people like 55+...

[Klaatu51]

"I HATE!!! the social media aspect of everything now. I wish there was a way to remove all those stupid buttons from my internet experience to be honest, also don't like how every web site now requires you to create an account."

^couldn't agree more...

i remember around 05-07 sites were still free too... and u didn't have to create an account... it sucks indeed...

[Jager66]

Yeah I think the average age was probably about that, don't know for certain though. I do remember my grand parents trying to figure that stuff out and people my parents age, their 30's, having to take class's to learn how to send an email and stuff. Was kinda funny messing with the few computers at the school because none of the teachers really knew how to use them yet.

[Klaatu51]

indeed... hehe... although they were xperienced people i guess back then... no?

computers xisted since 1946 as far as i know... although they weren't "personal" but they were used by large companies and by multiple users...

[Jager66]

yeah pretty much, I think the computer was actually invented during WW2, according to declassified info it was used to win the war by decripting the nazi enigma machine.

[GirlScout]

As someone who did deal with dial up modems, archaic parent filters and slow loading images I can tell you there is no way I'd go back.

The internet should be available to as many people as possible, it is a wealth of information and people deserve to have access to it. That's why I'm so against Zuckerberg and his disgusting idea to start charging people for it, what a hideous man he mist be... but anyways, the social media thing. I don't like social media that much, but the great thing about it and it's huge drawing point is that people want to share, I mean that is what the internet is really about - sharing of information, so the emergence and popularity of these sites is only natural.

[Klaatu51]

-when did u started to use internet? if u used internet in 90s widout yer mom being above yer head... then lucky u... ;)
-imo... more people = more trolls... less people = less trolls... y some lowlife dumpster jerk should use internet in order to tramp on others' lives?
-but when u see in almost EVERY site a "share" button... well it gets disgustin... i started to use internet heavily (widout mom being above me) around 04-05... and still there weren't things like "share it","follow us","like"... and BS like dat...

personally i'd like to go back when internet started or even pre-internet era when BBS were da only form of online communication...

basically i wish i was born like 3 decades earlier since i realize i don't match wid ma era/generation at all... well it wasn't ma choice anyway which year i was about to be born... but i can write a whole damn about many reasons y someone like me could have not only a better life... but be more successful if he was born 3 decades earlier... ;)

[Klaatu51]

*a whole damn book

[GirlScout]

I never had internet at home at all, that's what I mean by I think it's better that more people use it, without them using it the internet would be filled with the same people posting the same shite - also, there were trolls back then, plenty of them but people didn't make such a big deal about it. People could take a joke and not get so easily offended by people being jerks on the other side of the world.

As for the wrong decade thing, I think there's many people who feel that way - the world moves pretty fast nowadays.

[Klaatu51]

"I never had internet at home at all,"

^whoa... wait... how come? didn't xpect it...

"also, there were trolls back then, plenty of them but people didn't make such a big deal about it."

^but @NearlyNapping claims otherwise though...

"As for the wrong decade thing, I think there's many people who feel that way - the world moves pretty fast nowadays."

^and nothing to be proud of yer generation... :|

[GirlScout]

My family was very poor when I was growing up, we didn't have a phone either and we lived in the middle of nowhere so no neighbours to pop next door and use their internet so would only get to use it round friends houses.

The trolls thing - troll just seems to have turned into a word for anyone that pisses you off on the internet and I think most people labelled as a troll aren't really.

[Klaatu51]

so how do u define an "original" troll?

[GirlScout]

Well, people think that anyone who has a joke online is a troll, or anyone who brings up a controversial topic is just trolling to make people argue - trolling used to be purposeful. I don't know, like a practical joke sort of thing. Now it's a word people use for someone they don't agree with or someone who isn't being serious.

[Klaatu51]

personally i'd call a troll someone who starts fights on purpose... like postin a controversial topic... even if he doesn't believe wot he says just in order to cause arguements...

(xample: "i fucked ma mom... is it bad?")

[GirlScout]

yes but then you also get people being called trolls just for posting something controversial, like Do you believe in capital punishment. I've been accused of being a troll just for asking a question that will cause debate, now that's bullshit. Calling someone a troll for bringing up a hotly debated issue.

[Klaatu51]

ya i agree here... word "troll" is used in a wrong way in our days most of times...

[NearlyNapping]

OK, in order

1) Yea that was good. Social media sort of started in the late 90s with AOL and their chat rooms. Not really the same thing, but it sort of is. Basically it was the beginning of all the kiddies getting online and flooding the Internet with chit chat about nothing.

2) I suppose that's good too. I've never used social media. I just ignore it.

3) Actually it was both ways. The early web had really cluttered web pages. People didn't know how to make web pages yet. After a while they got uncluttered, partly because the clutter slowed things down when people were still using dial up. Then as speeds went up, it got cluttered again. The entire method of making web pages changed. The entire way they are written and programmed has changed.

4) In the US and some other countries it was pretty mainstream by the late 90s. The rest of the world is still coming online at a pretty rapid pace.

5) Trolls were less. They almost didn't even exist. That's because the kiddies weren't on yet. In the early 2000s there weren't many either. Anyone remotely resembling a troll was immediately booted. Now it's like admins think they need proof or something. No they don't. It's their site and they can kick anyone for any reason. Makes things cleaner.

6) Disagree on this one. It wasn't the speed that turned people into addicts. It was when they went to unlimited access. AOL started that in the late 90s (or at least in the US they were the first). Before that we paid by the minute. It got too expensive to stay on a lot. When AOL first went to unlimited, it took them totally by surprise how much time people spent online. It was immediate. Their entire network almost came to a halt and they were desperately bringing more modems online as fast as possible.

Another factor was broadband. Not because of the speed though. It was because it didn't tie up the phone line like dial up did. The majority of the population still didn't have cell phones. So when they were online they didn't have a phone.

7) Well, in truth there wasn't really much on the web yet. Most people were still using online services like CompuServe and AOL. That was not really the net, and definitely not the web. They were stand-alone services that were more like bullion boards. CompuServe was WAY better than AOL by the way. CompuServe had something like 20,000 forums. It was self contained though, not part of the web.

[Klaatu51]

1) still it wasn't as tedious as it is now...
2) kudos to u man...
3) still they were pretty basic... weren't they? basically there r still sites around in 90s style... and oh god i realize how more "eyes-friendly" r compared wid current ones...
4) indeed... in many African countries it's still a priviledge among only a few... but there they have other issues to deal wid than havin an internet connection i guess...
5) u should tell dis to other people among ma fuckin age group who think 90s or even early 00s internet was shit...
6) i see... well i can understand y though... if it was just a chatroom... then they didn't have to browse a lot... so there u have it...
7) sounds pretty nice... wot was da average # of posts/day in CompuServe?

[meatballs21]

Awful Geocities pages with rainbow banners, starfield backgrounds, embedded midi files, UNDER CONSTRUCTION and a visitor counter. Please sign our guestbook!

ANYWAY! I am posting on this old take because of that picture at the top!

When I was growing up, we lived in a three level house... bedrooms on the top, living room and kitchen on the middle, and basement/rec room on the bottom. The computer was down there and had its own phone line.

It also had this thing:
www.recycledgoods.com/.../...-no-ac-adapte-e1a.jpg

Well, it was 14.4k version of that, but externally it looked the same. This is the noise it made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E9L19aOxZ0

Did you jump a bit when it suddenly got WAY louder? Now imagine it's 2am and I'm supposed to be in bed. I figured out almost immediately that I had to use one of the couch cushions to muffle the sound it made while it connected.

Once I was on there, I was a happy boy with my copy of Free Agent, trawling newsgroups like alt. binaries. movies. erotica for what would now be considered extremely short, extremely low quality clips. MPEG files in those days, unless you had a dedicated card or a good PC, basically gave you a trade-off: you would pick framerate or colour. Dropping it down to 256 colours or even black and white would get you a smoother video.

But really, it was a weird age. Where you'd download one (very low resolution by today's standards) JPEG and you'd watch it fill in line by line. Exactly as depicted here on the Simpsons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSKBRWoGvL0

High speed? Well, yes, because modems used to be 1200baud.

[Fugue]

You could configure most modems to be silent. I had the US Robotics modem in the video, still have it somewhere in a junk drawer, and I could make it silent. But the noise was cool.

[meatballs21]

@Fugue I know there was an init string to make it silent when dialling (ATM0) but at the time wasn't sure how to apply that to the software we used to dial in.

[Red_Arrow]

No, No, No. Pretty much disagree across the board.

Social media. I have never been a great fan of social media. Took a few years to accept Facebook. I use it, but the only "friends" I have are real friends, so not anywhere near as many as so many people have. And we are able to share things with each other, things that we have in common and really want to see, not just a bunch of things that people stick on their page. And we still have e-mail. If you prefer email only, then use that only. But now we all have the choice.

Share buttons. Great. With only real friends on Facebook, most of what is shared is stuff we are all interested in and glad that somebody shared it when they saw it. Wonderful.

Simple backgrounds. Sometimes nice, but often too limiting. The early web pages were not even that. We began with bulletin boards, and compared to what we have now, they really sucked. Some web pages are overloaded and ridiculous, but even so, comparing the two, give me the newer ones.

Fast internet is a blessing. Just getting connected took several minutes sometimes. Time that could be better spent. And finding what you wanted was a joke at times. Need a particular pieces of info? You would spend a lot of time just to find something, then several minutes to download enough to read, and then find out it was not what you expected and needed. So back to searching again. You could spend hours to accomplish then what takes five minutes now.

The sounds? Ridiculous. Buzzes, beeps, and other nonsense noises, none of which helped us at all. They only signified that if someone was trying to reach us with an important call, they were getting a busy signal. And if you knew you had an important call coming, you could not even use the internet because you had to keep the line open.

Nope. No way was any of that better than what we have now. I would not go back to that for anything.

[Klaatu51]

-personally i made ma first fb account just in order to stalk others... but i was only 17 then though... so gimme a break... i realised how wrong i was then..

but back then it was "almost fresh"... so ok... now it's almost on its last legs... fb's popularity has faded away... now ig's da shit...

gotta admit though i use both fb and ig... for "other" purposes... if u catch ma drift...

but still...

-well... after seein "share it" everywhere... i felt disgusted after some point u know...

-dunno if they sucked or not since i've never used 'em personally since i was just a small kid when they xisted... i've seen screenshots though... and they have a certain "charm" new websites will never have for some reason...

-it's both good and bad as i said... do u disagree dat thanks to fast internet we have more addicts than before? guess not... coz it's a FACT... not just ma opinion...

[Klaatu51]

-well... sounds r more "nostalgic" basically... not useful anyway but nostalgic... but anyway mobiles co-xisted when internet became available to masses (~1994-1995)... so they could call u there i guess?

[Red_Arrow]

I got my Facebook account because a relative was posting photos of his kids there, and even at that I dragged my feet. Still have the account, but never collected all the "friends" that others do. For me. don't know much about IG other than it exists (on other people's computers). When you spoke of "share" I thought you were talking about the button "share" on FB. When my daughter became seriously ill, I got a pager for emergencies, then later got a cell phone, again only for emergencies. That was many years after I began using the internet, and since it was for emergencies only then, few people had my number, so it was not available to get around a phone line blocked by being on the internet.

Yes, the internet is addictive to many, but the cell phone is even more addictive to many. Some people can't go anywhere without constantly reading and texting, looking at videos, listening to music, etc. Take away their cell phone and they go into withdrawal, then start screaming and atteople.

[Klaatu51]

"Still have the account, but never collected all the "friends" that others do. "

^i had another account i used before and there i had 100 friends... in ma current one i have just 25...

"When you spoke of "share" I thought you were talking about the button "share" on FB."

^xactly...

"That was many years after I began using the internet, "

^u mean before i guess?

"and since it was for emergencies only then, few people had my number, so it was not available to get around a phone line blocked by being on the internet."

^well... it's a bad thing if yer daughter was seriously ill... i understand in dis case... but ok... if there was only one bad thing about 90s internet was "busy line"...

"but the cell phone is even more addictive to many. "

^indeed... but nowdays many use their phones for internet as well...

[Fugue]

Disagreed.

Anything you dislike about the current internet, you can ignore. But back in the dial up days, you simply didn't have certain things, and that's all there was. Having too much choice is better than not having enough.

I ignore social media and share buttons. Old internet didn't have any video streaming sites. You might have been able to download some shitty videos, but they were stand alone, and it was all very low traffic due to dialup speeds. Even if you were lucky enough to have broadband, that didn't magically create any new content.

The internet was relatively empty back then. The resources we have available now did not exist back then. You said it yourself, the internet was an exclusive club. Maybe you could feel like a special snowflake for a moment, but that also did not magically create more interesting content.

As far as trolls, there was this little thing called usenet which gained popularity at the same time as dialup did. Trolls were around back then. The only thing better in those days is that there were no moderators on usenet. It was self-moderating and democratic. If you didn't like somebody's postings, you blocked them and never downloaded their messages. None of this arbitrary moderation of today's forums, which only proliferated the clique mentality. But the point is that trolls weren't absent in Web 1.0, there were just less of them, since there were less people on the net, in general.

What you are commenting in favor of 56k internet is another case of the romanticized "good old days that never were". It's like when people thing it was awesome to be homesteaders in the middle of nowhere. No, it was hell, and people died or lingered in agony over stupid reasons.

by the way, 56k internet was rarely 56k. For that speed an exceptional ISP was needed, along with a phone line so noise-free that it was very unlikely to happen. It was usually more like 38k, or lower.

[Klaatu51]

"Having too much choice is better than not having enough. "

^but back then... was better than nothing... wasn't it?

"Old internet didn't have any video streaming sites. You might have been able to download some shitty videos, but they were stand alone, and it was all very low traffic due to dialup speeds. "

^indeed... BUT back then they didn't know how internet would end up 10 years later... so we shouldn't compare "then/now"...

" Maybe you could feel like a special snowflake for a moment, but that also did not magically create more interesting content"

^don't u agree when sth becomes mainstream gets cluttered in one way or another? see hip-hop music for xample... ;)

"But the point is that trolls weren't absent in Web 1.0, there were just less of them, since there were less people on the net, in general."

^dat was ma point... less people = less trolls...

by the way when did u start to use internet ON YER OWN? i don't mean wid yer mom being above u...

[Klaatu51]

if u r 25 as u say... then u were just a kid during 90s... so i don't think u were usin internet on yer own... right?

"What you are commenting in favor of 56k internet is another case of the romanticized "good old days that never were". It's like when people thing it was awesome to be homesteaders in the middle of nowhere. No, it was hell, and people died or lingered in agony over stupid reasons."

^is it bad to think past was better? and not only then internet... but i believe 20 years ago world was much better overall... and 20 years later it's gonna be even shittier than it is now... i'm almost 24 and as long as i'm alive i realised world's gets shittier and shittier as years go by... so...

[Fugue]

>but back then... was better than nothing... wasn't it?"

And yet we are comparing then and now.

Or what else was your premise, if not comparing 1990s to 2010s internet, as the title says?

"don't u agree when sth becomes mainstream gets cluttered in one way or another? see hip-hop music for xample..."

Clutter in that sense is a small price to pay for more choices. You can ignore this meta "clutter", so it's not really clutter that is in your way. If I put too much furniture in my house, that's clutter. If Chris Brown releases his latest buttbaby and calls it an album, I don't even notice.

"dat was ma point... less people = less trolls"

Less of everything else, too, which is not worth less trolls. Trolls don't even register as a concern, for me.

"by the way when did u start to use internet ON YER OWN? i don't mean wid yer mom being above u"

My mom never paid attention to what I saw online. My brother had a computer in the 90s and that was what I used, when he let me.

[Fugue]

I do remember using the internet on windows 98, so it must have been near the end of the 90s. But, no, I didn't set up any of it myself. It was my brother's computer and he was much older. I wasn't supervised when I used the internet, but I also didn't care for it as much as playing installed games and drawing on MS paint. I remember they gave me my own floppy to save my drawings on. Nowadays, it's common for even younger kids to use the internet.

"is it bad to think past was better?"

I don't know if it's good or bad, it's just not accurate. The world is getting worse, but not because of the internet. If anything, the internet might be a tool towards a solution for a better future.

[Klaatu51]

"And yet we are comparing then and now.

Or what else was your premise, if not comparing 1990s to 2010s internet, as the title says?"

^ah u got a point there... well generally i miss 90s tbh... i was only a kid by then though but still have some few memories here and there... and "90s internet" was sth i didn't get to xperience when it was around... :(

"My mom never paid attention to what I saw online. My brother had a computer in the 90s and that was what I used, when he let me."

^so not on yer own... well... when did u started on yer own? personally when i was like 12-13... u?

[Fugue]

I don't know what you mean by 'on your own', if not that. Nobody has ever supervised my internet usage (at least nobody that I know of).

[Klaatu51]

i mean when did u started to use yer OWN computer?

[Fugue]

You mean that I bought with money I earned myself? Probably at the end of high school.

[Accipiter]

No. Just no. I dreaded using AOL even during its prime in the days of dial-up.

Here's what all websites looked like in the 90s: www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm :PUKE:

-Search engines were way inferior to what they are now.
-Spam block did not exist in your email
-You had to use a screen name to access the internet. Believe it or not it you can do things a lot more anonymously than you could back in the '90s
-Text in websites was limited to Times New Roman, Comic Sans, and Arial
-Web design was a new concept in the 90s and more websites had super annoying flash intros
-Waiting an eternity to load a video or a flash-based game
-Shopping online was a lot more sketchy and insecure than it is today

But yes, the post millennial generation will never appreciate what the internet was like when it first got started.

[Accipiter]

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot:

-Your internet provider used to charge you by the minute

[Klaatu51]

"Here's what all websites looked like in the 90s: www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm :PUKE:"

^puke? oh c'mon bro... it's wonderful... so basic and wonderful...

i LOVE it and wish i could turn all da sites i use just like dat... :D

-Less options sure... but still... it was a start wasn't it?
-i don't have spam block and i get no spam at all...
-really? now u have to create an account if u wanna use a site...
-np... after all i don't use different fonds often...
-tbh i love those flash intros... well... they look cultish nowdays u know...
-indeed... but still...
-never shopped online in 90s so i dunno...

-ppl around ma age don't appreciate many things... unfortunately... especially when it comes to older technology... :(

[aliencreature]

i remember when my dad first showed me the internet. this was back before youtube, you could only find quality short films on clunky sites using quicktime media or realplayer. but it was great, there was this hilarious movie about a kid getting his clothes stolen at a pool party by a bully and then years later as an adult the bullys house is haunted by the grown up naked kid who has basically become this feral caveman, someone spent a lot of time and energy on it. i can't even find that video anymore, just loads of crap

[Klaatu51]

didn't remember dis movie... but man i remember quicktime... it was good... i kinda miss it tbh..

[godfatherfan]

wow... sorry but I guess you just have an idealistic "rose colored glasses" view.
if you lived it, it was only cool because it was the new thing. Compared to now, it sucked my big ole hog.
faster is always better.
try taking a college programming class while connecting with a 300 baud modem. OK that was the 1980's. but still, 2400k was still going strong in the 1990's and it wasn't much better. I listed a program, went and ate dinner, came back and still it wasn't to where I needed to be yet.
Sorry, but if you had been there... you would not think this at all.
**rufffles your hair, tells you "get outta here kid" ****

[abacaxi84]

The only good thing about it was that Facebook didn't exist back then. I am very glad that I did not to have to deal with social media as a teen. Pretty much everything else I don't miss: Dial up was a pain in the backside, not only was it painfully slow, but you'd be mid typing a chat on MSN messenger and then you'd get cut off because your mum wanted to use the phone!
Also, back in the late 90s/early 00s everyone would send these irritating chain joke emails (as people lacked pre-social media for posting dumb stuff) which were never funny.
The computer games back then were classics though: Lemmings, Duke Nukem and Sonic the Hedgehog - fond memories of wasting time on those as a kid and teen.

[Klaatu51]

"but you'd be mid typing a chat on MSN messenger and then you'd get cut off because your mum wanted to use the phone! "

^dat's y we have cellphones i guess...

"Dial up was a pain in the backside, not only was it painfully slow"

^but for THEN standards it was great... right?

"Also, back in the late 90s/early 00s everyone would send these irritating chain joke emails (as people lacked pre-social media for posting dumb stuff)"

^and today we get all those "like dis/dat" ... oh god... /

[legalboxers]

I like todays internet. I hated dialup personally, everytime I was on dialup doing my work my parents would harass me to get off the phone (so they can mock me to their friends I am not studying WHEN I AM ON LINE RESEARCHING MY ASSIGNMENT)
and hackers with mIRC were there. I been a member of the internet since 1994, only thing I do miss about 90s Internet, was a close friend of mine who passed away and I didn't even know until a few years later.

[Klaatu51]

"(so they can mock me to their friends I am not studying WHEN I AM ON LINE RESEARCHING MY ASSIGNMENT)"

^oh man... too bad... didn't u xplain wot u were doin?

"and hackers with mIRC were there. "

^sure... but hackers r not trolls... hackers r people who have knowledge about computers and they don't use it to jerk off...

"I been a member of the internet since 1994"

^awwwww...wish i was too... :(

"only thing I do miss about 90s Internet, was a close friend of mine who passed away and I didn't even know until a few years later."

^sure it's sad... but if u didn't use internet back then... u'd never know him right?

[legalboxers]

Im a guy, my friend who died had cancer and I didn't know,

as for my assignment, I did, they seen what I was doing they claimed "you got all day to do it" I got home from school at 6:00pm WHERE DO I HAVE TIME WHEN I GOTTA BE BACK AT SCHOOL EARLY MORNING

the hackers were trolls. looking to mess with you

[Zorax]

It was cool back in the 90's, but the internet was much slower :P

dailyoftheday.com/.../slow_internet.png

[Iron_Man]

Nice take. I did not have a computer back then I went to a friends house and saw his. and it was real slow he had dial up. We mostly got on a chat line and he had some online training videos. I did have web tv in early 2000 then I got my first laptop down the road

[tynamite]

I miss shockwave. com, meebo, MSN messenger, angelfire games, teagames, yahoo games, MSN chat

[NearlyNapping]

Yea, MSN was good. Nothing else has matched it.

[tynamite]

@NearlyNapping I remember the winks and nudges, and you could play games with your friends and change the text colour.

[Klaatu51]

whoa i miss MSN a lot as well... i was very disappointed when it fused wid Skype... :(

[COCOCHANEL]

it was better back in the 80s
black screen with bright green script
compuserv ♡

[Klaatu51]

gosh who downvoted u? black screen/green script... gotta love dis... <3

[Dipsy]

Usually a lot of things were better in the past than now. Life was way simpler back then.

[babu_001]

I disagree, even though I never used Internet in 90s.

There is everything available on the internet. It depends on you how to use it.

There is facebook, twitter and all the social media shit. But I never use them. I assume these are the mediums for lonerfags who can't get a friend or a person to talk to.

If anybody is addicted to internet, I say they need to be more socialize.

[KidanisCortes]

I mean speed had nothing to do with it I had a 56k modem and still was an addict MSN was a bitch to leave

[Klaatu51]

well... being in MSN u didn't have to "surf" a lot... so...

[ConsultantIsBack]

Dude I grew up on shitty DIAL UP internet. Sooooo sloooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[Klaatu51]

but good back then... wasn't it?

[ResonantGuy]

I wouldn't want that back. Even in this time, I've an overpriced 512 kbps and internet is already like that 😢

[Blueeyes81]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aV8DEJ8ydJQ

Still makes me hard.

[DeenaGupro]

ok... so only you have the right to use this technology? got it... TCP/IP exists for all, not you alone haaha.

[Klaatu51]

wot do u wanna try to say bro? i meant some people ABUSE technology...

[DeenaGupro]

humans will abuse anything...