Do you remember dial-up Internet?
AOL?
Primitive chat rooms?
Yeah, those were the good old days!
Or, maybe they weren’t really that good…but today we’re going to revisit them because folks on AskReddit talked about the early days of the Internet.
Let’s go back in time!
1. Good times.
“CheatCC FTW.
I used to spend ages in Word formatting those with graphics and cover pages before printing them.
Gotta get all those Smash Bros characters.
Ah, good times.”
2. Obsessed.
“Homestar Runner.
I used to spend HOURS watch Teen Girl Squad videos. I was straight-up obsessed.
Hadn’t thought about that site in ages!”
3. Remember?
“Windows Live Messenger, where you had to type the emoticons.
Here’s a few I remember: (L) ❤️ (8) 🎵 (H) 😎 (55) 🤠 (W) 🌷.”
4. Hurry up!
“Knowing how fast your dialup connection was going to be before it finished because you could tell from the handshake sounds.”
5. Back in the day.
“Desktop themes like The Simpsons where Homer says “doh!” as an error sound.
Skins for your yahoo messenger so the background and buttons were of a certain theme.
ICQ messenger
Dolls or animated dolls to be used as your avatar. You’d design it to resemble yourself.
Soap City message boards
My 2000 computer came with a web design program installed that would upload your web page to the internet.
Incredimail, a program to send emails that had a picture and clickable sounds. People would design different themed “stationary” for others to use.”
6. Can you recall?
“What was the website that had bunches of free ‘tools’ that you would add to your www.?
Things like visit counters, webrings etc.
Remembered it the other day but have lost the name and d**ned if I can think of it…”
7. NNTP.
“NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) and UseNet
This used to be popular before web based forums. The main thing I liked was that you could use a single good reader app for all of the groups and any changes were ‘pushed’ to you when the app started.
This was superceded by web based forums that you had to sign up for and check yourself periodically for any changes. Every site used different forum software so you then had to learn to navigate each one separately.
Definely a step backwards in my opinion.”
8. Never heard of it.
“Usenet. 5 years before web pages.
In the summer of 1989 I blew out a printer ribbon printing out about 100 pages of sci.space on a dot matrix printer to take on vacation.”
9. For the veterans.
“A lot of old web things like webcomics, YTMND, IRC chats, fansites and forums are still around in a pathetic, run down state.
The thing the internet veterans will remember are these things actually being popular.”
10. The old Amazon.
“When Amazon only sold books. I remember I used to order books from Amazon and have them delivered to my work.
A co-worker asked me what kind of rainforest stuff I kept ordering. She assumed Amazon.com had something to do supporting the rainforests.”
11. Had to type them out.
“Actually typing out emojis.
Like who knew :(|) turned into a monkey in gchat?”
12. The list.
“Netscape Navigator!
MUDs.
AIM.
ICQ.
Napster
Dial-up.”
Now we want to hear from you.
Do you remember any stuff from the old Internet days?
If so, tell us all about them in the comments!
