Do You Remember the 90's Internet?

[FunInTheSunParticipant 8283]

Back in 1997, I bought my first internet-compatible computer. Its processor was like the tortoise vs. the hare compared to the laptop I have now. I paid for an AOL membership, made up a few screen names, and then went exploring. I used to spend about 4 to 5 hours in chat rooms after work. Sometimes I’d spend hours looking at photos of naked women. I’d often stay up all night and come to work sleepy the next day.

In those days, there wasn’t much filtering of search engines or regulation of website content. You could put anything on a website. All the horrors of the world were on display.

In those days, the dial up modem had to be unplugged to make or receive a phone call (thank goodness somebody solved that problem), and most people didn’t have cell phones. So one day I get fed up and paid for two phone lines so I could use the phone while I was on the internet.

Right now, I use the internet to check e-mail, pay my bills, and visit a few of my favorite websites. There are about 10 websites that I regularly use. When I first started using the internet, I wanted to look at every website I could find. But a lot of websites have useless information and content.

I like short, video news clips from The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and a YouTube channel called MoxNews. Mark Dice videos (YouTube) are funny sometimes. I use a Russian website to watch illegal live streams of The Lakers. I like Google Talks because they provide a platform for interesting people to give speeches and take questions. I like C-SPAN for it’s unbiased display of newsworthy events. And, of course, this website is on my favorite list.

"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" (Atlas Shrugged)

[Mike-PoffwithPofParticipant 126]

Beeeegoiing…beeegoiing…Kkkkeerrrrr…. 🙂

I still have my old USRobotics modem somewhere in my unit, along with a 1980 Sinclair Spectrum and old Nokia phone

[hmskl’dParticipant 6409]

I bought my first computer in October of ’99. I do miss those days .. and I miss many of the friends that I had in NZ and AU in the old Lounge. We also spent time on IRC but I’ve lost contact with them all. Some of the greatest memories of that era, 2000 and -01 when some people had cams throughout their homes and we could watch them living their daily lives. One in particular had seven cams .. it was great. They set up their own system and had forums attached and we all got to know each other.
The old websites that provided everything to build your own web pages. Counters, remember midi-music backgrounds and guest-books?
Things were much less commercialized and the homemade nature of may sites was really fun. Lots of people ran webcams on ww just to show their set-ups. All that is gone .. except for the memories I saved on discs.

[FunInTheSunParticipant 8283]

hmskl’d wrote:

We also spent time on IRC b

Me too. I chatted with a lot of people around the world with IRC. They have told me about their lives and given me an idea of what it’s like to live in a foreign country.

"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" (Atlas Shrugged)

[Blue SkiesParticipant 15665]

AOL internet
remember that?

MGTOW is not a movement, it is a way of life.

[anonymousyamParticipant 4605]

I was too late for the 90’s i remember the mid 2000’s to late 2000’s internet however and the classic spam ads that came with it. Shoot a watermelon for a free iphone, play X game with lady with boobs on the front by clicking this link, you need to download drivers for windows xp etc.

Just an east coast asshole who likes to curse, If you get offended by words like fuck, cunt, shit, piss, bitch or any racial slurs then you just scroll down.

[RennieParticipant]

Well. Didn’t have internet till the spring of 2000. When we did get the internet, it was dial up, with the typical obnoxiously loud internal 56K modem and of course I often tied up the phone line on it. Though I remember the first day we had the internet, I had no idea what to do with it. But soon I came up with all kinds of crazy ideas for what to do with it and I was rarely disappointed.

However. Prior to 2003, much of that old 90’s internet was still in place and I remember it well. So I guess in a way I did experience the ’90’s internet and it was absolutely sublime. I miss those days, they were simpler, more innocent, less crazy times.

In 2002 I think It was I went on porn for the first time. What a rush that was and then I got busted for it after the fact, because I didn’t think to erase the history. >.< And get this. I was taken to my mother and forced to apologize and accused of “exploiting women” and a bunch of other malarkey. I distinctly remember thinking how that made no sense whatsoever.

In 2003. I set up my first website on some webhost name that I can’t remember. It had midi music, garish colors, counter and a guestbook. I also had Geocities a bit later on. They were pretty useless websites, mostly just a toy and for expressing your youthful foolishness.

Back in the day people put up their own sites, with their own projects like their games and flash cartoons. Sadly that is almost entirely a thing of the past now. Though I have managed to preserve a few of the internet games I was fond of in those days.

[SandalsParticipant 4253]

Compuserv

[FunInTheSunParticipant 8283]

Rennie wrote:

forced to apologize and accused of “exploiting women”

Ha ha! These women get on the internet and masturbate in front of a camera for money or just attention. They WANT to be looked at! And quite a few of them have gleefully volunteered to put on a sex show for thousands of dollars.

If you want to talk about exploitation, let’s talk about some poor soul halfway around the world who’s getting paid $1 an hour to make a smartphone…so some bimbo can spend the day taking selfies for her Instagram page.

"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" (Atlas Shrugged)

[MenckenParticipant 693]

If you need a reminder of what websites looked like, here are two original websites that were forgotten and left up. Feel free to donate to the Bob Dole campaign.

http://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

http://www.dolekemp96.org/

I used 90s internet for age of empires. I used to collect AOL cds from grocery stores and use them at shooting ranges. I talked to a few girls in chat rooms and downloaded country music on napster.

By the way, somebody needs to make an armored tank out of old Nokia Phones. Those things have survived bombs.

Misogynist - A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

[coolthingy450Participant 1223]

I remember back then that AOL was still a thing to use as a search engine. it was a pain when someone wanted to phone somebody, and I had to cancel what I was doing and wait for 10 mins until that person is done using the phone.

I used to play a lot of city building games, as well a western survival game. The word bored didn’t even exist to me. It was so existing that my folks were worried that I wouldn’t be able to make friends since I spent too much time alone. They put me on a porkchop setup. In their own f~~~ing terms it means that I give out candy so that I can play with kids.

I never even cared about being alone until adults tried to make it my problem by putting me on programs. So the 90s internet was a great escape, and a good way to learn stuff on your own.

Actions have consequences and consequences have prices. Cause and effect at work.

[RennieParticipant]

FunInTheSun wrote:

Rennie wrote:

forced to apologize and accused of “exploiting women”

Ha ha! These women get on the internet and masturbate in front of a camera for money or just attention. They WANT to be looked at! And quite a few of them have gleefully volunteered to put on a sex show for thousands of dollars.

If you want to talk about exploitation, let’s talk about some poor soul halfway around the world who’s getting paid $1 an hour to make a smartphone…so some bimbo can spend the day taking selfies for her Instagram page.

Exactly. They choose to do it willingly, or else it would be illegal and promptly stopped. It’s stuff like that that put me on the MGTOW Express.

Mencken wrote:

I used to collect AOL cds from grocery stores and use them at shooting ranges.

I remember back in the day, they would have huge bins of these AOL disks in the middle of major stores. I used to get them, just because they were “free” – blame childhood ignorance. But they weren’t of any actual use, because the computer was so pitiful, it didn’t even have a modem. But I didn’t know anything about it back then. As a child I always imagined the computer needed some dedicated line installed in order to use the internet. But that didn’t stop me from trying to make it work anyways on one occasion.

Before the internet, there was a Microsoft interactive encyclopedia program called Encarta. That and books was how we learned things back then – in the dark ages.

[Mister StealthParticipant 362]

Old dial up… I remember when they finally went to unlimited minutes a month. Instead of X amount of hours a month of slow internet I could use it all month as long as no in picked up the phone lol.

Good times

Steel sharpens steel

[GrumpyParticipant]

I remember the BBS and IRC systems.
4800Baud max speeds, typing commands passwords/log ins, creating GUI’s , working in DOSShell.
Its a lot easier now 🙂
My friends still joke that when I first started with the “internet” it was actually smoke signals…

There was a time in my life when I gave a fuck. Now you have to pay ME for it

[Freeman_KParticipant 3524]

Netscape navigator, dial up, icq, mIRC. 🙂

The choices we make, not the chances we take, determine our destiny

[Anonymous 11]

Unix based chat program and email via Pine it was a huge deal to even have access. The WWW had not been implemented. It was 1989 so close enough.

I still have my collection of mid-90s porn.

[Mike-PoffwithPofParticipant 126]

Anonymous wrote:

I still have my collection of mid-90s porn

All on 8″ floppy disks 🙂

Had a look around the unit the other day, I never throw out old technology and it all still works!
…some of the stuff I found:
Countless Dialup disks – Worldonline, AOL
External dialup modem
8″ disk drive
External 3.25″ disk drive
Zip drive
Sinclair Spectrum and games
Commodore 64 and games
Atari ST

Back in the mid 90s the internet was quite an exciting thing, a real free-for all, full of crap unprofessional but funny sites …the hours I used to be on, the in-laws forever complaining that they couldn’t get through because the line was engaged and I’d blocked the phone line 🙂
Still have tons of stuff back then backed up on disks, then CDs, then DVDs…must look at it all one day 🙂

[Pedal, run, rowParticipant]

I remember “newsgroups” and a buddy of mine telling me about the crazy porn that was on them. Probably some time around 95?

I think I set a land speed record getting home that night and downloading a newgroup reader, and jesus was that s~~~ crazy!!!! Like a kid in the candy store.

The only thing that kept me in check was 9600 connection. I think my head(s) would have exploded with cable or DSL.

I got thrown off AOL when I told some dude I would find him and f~~~ him up very badly if he ever asked on the group for kiddie porn again…

Those were some crazy days. Now every site has pop ups, and track you etc.

[RennieParticipant]

Freeman_K wrote:

Netscape navigator, dial up, icq, mIRC.

I remember seeing that on the school computers around 1997-1998. That was the first time I ever glimpsed the internet. We had to pay $2.00 to the school for an “internet license”.

Anonymous wrote:

I still have my collection of mid-90s porn.

Must be good stuff.

Pedal, run, row wrote:

Those were some crazy days. Now every site has pop ups, and track you etc.

Even worse now is that the modern internet is pretty much unusable with older systems like Commodore Amigas and even the most powerful machines of the era like Silicon Graphics systems.

Every web browser is so bloated and websites are poorly designed and filed with cpu cycle hogging scripts.

Mike-PoffwithPof wrote:

Back in the mid 90s the internet was quite an exciting thing, a real free-for all, full of crap unprofessional but funny sites …the hours I used to be on

Indeed it was a beautiful, vast, wilderness of fascinating things. I also used to spend hours exploring it. The content back then was really top notch stuff for the time.

[Pedal, run, rowParticipant]

Oh, btw, my first computer I went to an expo and the 386 has just come out, but I didn’t have the coin for that monster, so I got a sweet deal on a 286.
It came with a 40 MB (that’s right MB, not GB) hard drive, and the guy tried to sell me a 80mb upgrade, and I replied: “I can’t see ever needing more than 40mb!”

LOL

My sound card died, and my dad was an electrical engineer and I did a lot of bench work with him as a kid, so I took it out and found the faulty component, and took it in to the computer store at the mall. The guy looked at me like I was a 3 headed, purple Martian, and told me: “No one repairs this s~~~. You just throw it away and buy a new sound card!”

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