Does anyone else miss the "old" internet?

[StraightVege]

Yeah, I forgot to mention paywalls. Thankfully, various methods of bypassing them exist. I certainly feel no moral obligation to support gargantuan global media companies like Forbes or what have you.

[Sikutai]

You mean that old internet, where I had to dial into the phone jack with my 33K modem, couldn't use the phone during that time and had to pay by minute? No, I do not miss it.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Sikutai

[AJ_Radio]

1 hour ago, Sikutai said:

You mean that old internet, where I had to dial into the phone jack with my 33K modem, couldn't use the phone during that time and had to pay by minute? No, I do not miss it.

Also depends on what you were stuck with. You’re talking very early 90’s era internet, which was purely a luxury since few people could even obtain it, let alone afford it. 

[You]

1 hour ago, Sikutai said:

You mean that old internet, where I had to dial into the phone jack with my 33K modem, couldn't use the phone during that time and had to pay by minute? No, I do not miss it.

 

The infrastucture of the Internet, certainly in the UK anyway, we had this service called "NTL" come around dug up our street and from that we got a new phone and Internet connection, and the Internet was free all of the time and didn't affect the phone lines. I can't remember the exact details of the speed, but it was about 10-20k a sec which was way faster than than 2-5k a second you'd get on dial up, and you couldn't use the phone, and you paid by the minute.

 

For me this was the peak of the Internet, the Internet was still great, hadn't been filled by idiots yet, and bloatware wasn't as predominant yet. My sites I visit (including this one) don't feel any faster or sometimes feel worse than loading sites in the 2000s. For one thing integrated animated adverts hadn't been invented yet. Sure online gaming wasn't a thing yet, but similarly smart phones and free to play mechanics hadn't started ruining everything yet.

 

Certainly the Internet infrastructure, wireless and being able to get on the Internet, it's never been easier.

 

I remember Kawaks in 2004 or so, that allowed me to have 4 player coop on MAME, or Megadrive ROMS, with little to medium lag, like almost 20 years ago.

[Sikutai]

7 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

Also depends on what you were stuck with. You’re talking very early 90’s era internet, which was purely a luxury since few people could even obtain it, let alone afford it. 

 

I am talking about the Dreamast Era, 1999.

[Jeanolt]

You're not a boomer Raidou, don't worry about that?

Boomer is more of a mentality than an actual age, being nostalgic is actually ok and everyone is at some point of their lives. The problem is when the narrative changes to "x was better in the past because I say".

 

But like someone said before, if the thing you miss about the internet is being a bad person, it talks more about you, than the internet itself. Yes, there's a lot of people in the internet right now, but that's society.

 

I'm younger so I personally miss the no-ads videos, flash games, facebook games and being able to share that with friends.

Some things like Spotify and emulators are a blessing, and having a huge amount of information from the last decade at your fingertips too. 

[Raidou Kuzunoha XIV]

10 minutes ago, Jeanoltt said:

You're not a boomer Raidou, don't worry about that

Boomer is more of a mentality than an actual age, being nostalgic is actually ok and everyone is at some point of their lives. The problem is when the narrative changes to "x was better in the past because I say".

 

But like someone said before, if the thing you miss about the internet is being a bad person, it talks more about you, than the internet itself. Yes, there's a lot of people in the internet right now, but that's society.

 

I'm younger so I personally miss the no-ads videos, flash games, facebook games and being able to share that with friends.

Some things like Spotify and emulators are a blessing, and having a huge amount of information from the last decade at your fingertips too. 

 

Yeah, I was mostly joking but it does make me feel old when I can look back at things that happened 20+ years ago and think "ah, I miss that", lol.

 

I did used to be a bit of a little shit back when I was a kid on the internet (I mean, I'm still an asshole now but at least I try to temper myself more), but I look back at those times feeling cringe more than anything. I think one of the worst things I ever did was when I got us temporarily IP banned from AOL because I thought it'd be funny to spam a friend with a bunch of emails, then just played dumb and pretended we must have just been hacked when my mother questioned me about it.

[Baranov_925]

no

[AJ_Radio]

11 hours ago, enaysoft said:

The infrastucture of the Internet, certainly in the UK anyway, we had this service called "NTL" come around dug up our street and from that we got a new phone and Internet connection, and the Internet was free all of the time and didn't affect the phone lines. I can't remember the exact details of the speed, but it was about 10-20k a sec which was way faster than than 2-5k a second you'd get on dial up, and you couldn't use the phone, and you paid by the minute.

 

For me this was the peak of the Internet, the Internet was still great, hadn't been filled by idiots yet, and bloatware wasn't as predominant yet. My sites I visit (including this one) don't feel any faster or sometimes feel worse than loading sites in the 2000s. For one thing integrated animated adverts hadn't been invented yet. Sure online gaming wasn't a thing yet, but similarly smart phones and free to play mechanics hadn't started ruining everything yet.

 

Certainly the Internet infrastructure, wireless and being able to get on the Internet, it's never been easier.

 

I remember Kawaks in 2004 or so, that allowed me to have 4 player coop on MAME, or Megadrive ROMS, with little to medium lag, like almost 20 years ago.

Creativity is almost nonexistent now. 
 

Someone said Angelfire and Geocities were utter crap. Sure, there were a lot of badly designed websites, but a lot of people wanted to be creative, so they ended up making some pretty cool ones. 
 

The 2000’s was also when video ads weren’t completely shoved on sites like YouTube. Nowadays you try watching a 30 minute video without a AdBlock plugin or YouTube Premium and you’re faced with several video ads which are insufferable. It’s basically cable tv 2.0 at this point, only worse. 
 

Instead of Angelfire and Geocities we have Wix and WordPress, both of which are cookie cutter and use templates. That stifles creativity, and since most people just visit the same dozen websites, many don’t see a point in creating a personal website. 
 

4 hours ago, Sikutai said:

 

I am talking about the Dreamast Era, 1999.

 

I don’t know where you lived back then, but where I grew up we had 28k dial-up, then 56k. Internet wasn’t by the minute.
 

What you got and how much you paid per month (which our parents did, let’s be honest, unless you were over 18 in 1999 - 2000) varied. 

 

2 hours ago, Jeanoltt said:

You're not a boomer Raidou, don't worry about that

Boomer is more of a mentality than an actual age, being nostalgic is actually ok and everyone is at some point of their lives. The problem is when the narrative changes to "x was better in the past because I say".

 

But like someone said before, if the thing you miss about the internet is being a bad person, it talks more about you, than the internet itself. Yes, there's a lot of people in the internet right now, but that's society.

 

I'm younger so I personally miss the no-ads videos, flash games, facebook games and being able to share that with friends.

Some things like Spotify and emulators are a blessing, and having a huge amount of information from the last decade at your fingertips too. 

Boomer comes from the Baby Boomer generation (1946 - 1964) ranting about everything. Ok Boomer also got more popular when Donald Trump became US President. 
 

I’ve given Joe Biden the meme along with some other people. 

[StraightVege]

3 hours ago, Raidou Kuzunoha XIV said:

I did used to be a bit of a little shit back when I was a kid on the internet (I mean, I'm still an asshole now but at least I try to temper myself more), but I look back at those times feeling cringe more than anything. I think one of the worst things I ever did was when I got us temporarily IP banned from AOL because I thought it'd be funny to spam a friend with a bunch of emails, then just played dumb and pretended we must have just been hacked when my mother questioned me about it.

 

Heh, I've a similar story. We had a 56k modem at the time, and I ran up our family phone bill to nightmarish proportions after our AOL trial expired, because I was addicted to multiplayer and refused to stop playing. ? Very laggy multiplayer, I might add.

 

Pretty tame compared to some of the antics I got up to online, though. One forum I was on, we made a pastime out of brutally mocking the physical appearance of new members, whenever they posted photos in the picture thread. I said some pretty awful things, just for digital high fives, and the mods didn't care in the slightest. I definitely don't miss this sort of behavior being commonplace. Wish I could time travel back to slap my teenage self sometimes, in fact.

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by StraightVege

[Sikutai]

11 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

 

 

 

I don’t know where you lived back then, but where I grew up we had 28k dial-up, then 56k. Internet wasn’t by the minute.
 

What you got and how much you paid per month (which our parents did, let’s be honest, unless you were over 18 in 1999 - 2000) 

 

Maybe in the US, on Europe it was 33K all the time and pay by minute.

[VigilantCrow]

Old internet was sketchy as hell. Couldn't even play a friendly game of Yahoo Chess without "being asked A/S/L?", with the other person hoping you were a minor.

 

I'll stick to new internet, especially when I'm now looking after a little one.

 

 

Edited October 28, 2022 by VigilantCrow

[Helyx]

LOL @ Neopets and Runescape being "the old internet".

[Silver-I-Chariot]

What I miss most are old online chat rooms and messengers like ICQ and MSN. You would meet total strangers in online games, add them and somehow become close friends. I don't know how or why it worked but that's just how it was back then. Maybe it's still that way on newer platforms like discord and maybe I'm just too old but personally I find making friends was so much easier back then.

[Hitman_Spinksy1]

I miss the old days but definitely not the old internet, just the noise of dial up and by the time you get connected someone rings and you have to start the whole process all over again. Everything moves too fast nowadays though, no ones ever happy with what they have, a new console comes out, everyone wants it better, 60fps, now we need 120 fps. Iphone 12, but we need an Iphone 13. Some people forget we had a nes, master system, mega drive, snes 16bit games where you had to leave the console on because you couldn't save. We had joy from playing snake on our phones and using a phone for what it is. Now it's instagram, twitter, facebook, whatsapp, tiktok, snapchat, messenger. Why do we need to post pictures one place whilst sending them to friends somewhere else whilst making a video elsewhere, calling on a different app and sending messeges on another. It's enough to make one's head spin. 

 

The past wasn't great but I guess it all depends where in the world you live. I grew up in the uk and in the 90s £1 would get you so far, I remember being able to get a bag of crisps, a drink some chocolate, sweets and still have change left over. Now £1 wouldn't even get you a drink and the wage definitely hasn't increased that much and for the average person buying a house or a new car is just a dream. 

I moved to Sweden however 10 years ago and I could buy my house, car, have children, have a decent size garden for them to play in and I didn't need to be highly educated to accomplish this so it shows that depending what country you are in depends how much it will let you accomplish. In my position now if I lived a symetrical life in the UK I'd probably have enough to rent an apartment with a second hand car that breaks all the time. 

 

The 90s defintely made me nostalgic about a lot and gave me a lot of stories to tell and I feel that will be missed with the new generation that are caught up in the social media hype that barely leave the house but I'm grateful for everything I got to experience. I'm sure if we asked our parents/grandparents they would also have their own opinions on when the best time was 

[Fing3rButt3r3]

Yes I do miss the old internet in a way I didnt have to pay back then, I used something called netzero, and I got a hack to make it unlimited use for free. It was great. Now im paying nearly $200 a month on top of a ton of other subscriptions, back then most things could be torrented too. Now? torrent had major crackdowns, most torrent sites are gone, the good ones at least. I wouldnt mind joining more services if they were actually good and not trying to milk me dry.

[AJ_-_808]

... dude, you're slipping. This thread isn't 5+ years old yet

[PHIL_DADDY1]

Not the old dial up internet....

[Eraezr]

Forums were fun back then.

 

I sometimes visit https://vndb.org/ just to bask in the vibe of the era then, with how they refuse to change the website layout. From a techno-futurist point of view, today's walled gardens (Google's search engine monopoly, iOS, Facebook, etcetera)  in the west bottleneck's the internet's potential.

[BlackRogue187]

every day i do 

[Raidou Kuzunoha XIV]

We have a new thread bumper in town since I started only checking these forums once a month...?

 

Funnily enough, since I created this thread, I found a webpage that has several archived pages from the olden days of the internet. It's cool to browse the random pages every now and then for that occasional nostalgia dose.

[ChilledBrandon]

I think I mostly miss the feeling of everything feeling 'fresh'. Like when YouTube first started up. It had a very different vibe to it.

 

I would say the thing i miss the most though is MSN Messenger at its peak. I had a lot of people I talked to on there, it kept me social when I was younger.

[mega-tallica]

Back when it took days to download one song on LimeWire? Nah, I don't miss it at all. 😆

 

It was also the Wild West back then. If you think the internet is bad now with trolls and hateful comments, it was nothing compared to the early days of the internet before it all got moderated and censored. Some sites still have archived comments from like 2004 and prior that you can still see and read today. You'll find out real quick why we have to censor and moderate the internet now. 

 

90's internet was just listening to 'EEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrRRRRrrrrrrrrrr' for 5 minutes and hopefully you connect just to read some pixelated Yahoo news article that would load one line at a time. Crazy how far we've come from the dial up internet days. Nostalgic, sure, but also good riddance. 

[Silver-I-Chariot]

Does anyone remember when we didn't have to click on accept/reject cookies everytime we open a website? I think it only applies to EU though. But it's the most pointless and annoying law they ever introduced. 

[Dante_Kinkade]

The old internet was the best, I would run around it looking up all sorts of things. If I found something I liked there would be web circles for it, making it easy to hop between sites.

Now most of the time I am online I am on twitter, youtube or a few other places. I almost never randomly search around because it always yields the same old boring sites.