Yeah, confirmed I am also this old, the normal amount.
Internet was good when it was shackled to computers and wasn’t spread everywhere via smartphones.
Commenting this from smartphone.
Yeah, the ubiquity of it made it even more attractive to advertisers. Even more attractive when everything went from being individual forums to Facebook groups or subreddits.
Used to be a plugin called StumbleUpon.
People who used it could submit websites to it, tag them. Then htting the button on the plugin would take you to a random website from your selected interests. Like/dislike/report as needed.
The internet used to be magnificent.
I used to love that so much
I found a site recently, called Cloudhiker that’s a Stumbleupon Replacement
Wasn’t there a button on Google that did that, too?
Not exactly, but there was an “I’m feeling lucky” button which was similar enough.
Web rings!
I’ve come across a still-living webcomics webring the other day, made me feel nostalgic :')
I haven’t uses google in so long, I thought that was still there. Oh well, all the fun stuff is gone
“I’m feeling lucky” or something like that?
Sure Ask Jeeves did this too.
I’ll Ask Jeeves before I ever ask ChatGPT
What about a Hot bot?
Edit: I went and checked and the old hotbot.com has been turned into an AI search. Eww
.I remember when my mum used to say “Don’t bother your dad, he’s on the internet” like it was this big important thing. Not “He’s checking his email”, or anything more specific, the simple act of being on the internet was actually of note.
Also, don’t pick up the phone because we only have one line
Back then people might say something like, “I work with computers,” because it actually narrowed things down.
Back when my friend got AOL for the first time, I came over and we sent an e-mail to the While House urging Bill Clinton to protect the environment.
I’m not insecure about my age, though. On the contrary, people younger than me should be insecure about theirs. No one born in the 21st century can ever really reach adulthood, IMO.
My taekwondo trainer is younger than my driver’s license. That kind of hurt.
I was new when the Internet was new (for consumers), but I remember introducing Warcraft II to a friend.
Zug zug.
Did you get the ones on the floppy or on the CD?
I think the first time I played it, I used my brother’s computer on which he had already installed it, probably through floppies.
I don’t remember how I installed it on subsequent computers … But I have written programs in BASIC and transported them on floppies, including for college courses.
yes
I’m a medieval man 🎶
Lol are you one of those kids from The Kid’s Guide to the Internet?
I’m only 35 and we did this as kids.
Only 35 lol
Rude haha
You’ll be 35 before you know it. At a certain point in adulthood, years start to fly by so fast.
You’ll be 35 before you know it
I’m almost there. I accepted I was old when I joined a video game and heard “You sound like you’re 30”. I was infact, 30.
I’m under 30 and did this
Aight im in my 20s and even I did this growing up, is that person just a fucking teenager or something?
I don’t know what end of 20’s you’re at, but I’m in my late 20’s. I have 3 younger siblings. The oldest of my siblings also did this, but the younger two did not. The third sibling would watch Youtube and stuff with friends on like a XBox, but not just browsing the web or playing flash games. By the time my youngest sibling was about that age, all of their friends had some form of internet connected device on their own. Whenever their friends would come over, they’d watch movies or play board games or other “in person activities”, but not browse the web together.
We used to go to arcades even when we had no money just to watch other people play over their shoulders.
It was like Twitch, but sweaty and with more mullets.
I can smell this comment.
Watching the gods play Marvel vs Capcom 2 was peak mall rat experience
Hah. I’m old enough to watch the norms play Street Fighter II The World Warrior.
All my joints ache. Even the ones you didn’t know were joints.
ha except it was floppy disk computer games and not this highway thing.
Back in my day, they were called floppy disks for a reason.
5.25 or 8 inch?
I’m a modest man
You call that 8 inches?
SCNR
There was no hard disk.
Mine was hard though
Or datasette tapes because floppy readers were expensive.
or typing in the assembly from a magazine article! which never works lol
I took for granted that the internet only existed in libraries and wealthy friends’ houses
Who had a CD ROM drive and a sound blaster? Doom was a whole new dimension with it. It was real and very scary!
I sank hundreds of late night hours and doubled my bladder size while being completely enthralled on that very setup. cd D:/, doom.exe
Old internet was the shit. Netscape navigator on a crappy 56k or DSL line, AIM, Runescape Classic. What a time to be alive.
Lineage was my intro to MMOs.
I was following it just fine until the “experience the information superhighway” part.
My mate’s ZX Spectrums had no “information superhighway” connection.
Information back alley trickle
Best we could manage was failing to get anywhere in a Dizzy game.
In the early '80s we used to hang out at my one friend’s house and play games on his TRS-80 which we affectionately called the “Trash 80”. We were all in high school except Monty who was 23 and enormously obese. Monty had a real job as a programmer somewhere and one afternoon he sat down at the Trash 80 and wrote a very plausible hi-res version of Space Invaders from scratch in about half an hour. At the time it meant nothing to me, but now after a 30 year career as a programmer myself I understand just how impressive that actually was.
Monty wired up his car’s alternator to the ignition switch and he would leave his keys in the switch, hoping that somebody would attempt to steal his car and die. Not knowing about this, one of our friends ran out to his car after a D&D session, started it up and drove around the parking lot. Monty was so disappointed that nothing happened. I kinda miss the '80s.
Ughhhh my friends would come over to watch me play club penguin. Then we would walk to their house and watch them play club penguin. When we older we called each other while playing together. Also Halo CE was awesome in 4v4 multiplayer spit on a 1080 TV, 4 IRL people playing against 4 randos. One time I was hasty and picked “Hang em High” when it was my friends choice, I then asked “wanna play Hang em High?” It felt the natural pick lol
