People who used the internet before 1999, what do you remember?
by
u/Revolutionary_Data86 in
AskReddit
ferminriii
Everything was new. Whatever new website you found, it was the first time you looked at it. There was no YouTube so people were just launching websites to be funny and post jokes and tell stories. You learned about things from your friends. I remember I was on some kind of email list that got emailed picture of the day. It ended up becoming a lot of what was recycled on FARK.com
Richard_Sauce
This is important thing. Like, yeah, dial tones and AOL, lol.
But the important thing was the expansiveness, the sense of discovery, the DIY/self-made nature of everything. Finding and building communities. The internet used to be made and controlled by people before it became a main street of corporately own websites. Nothing but digital chain restaurants now.
And lest you think I’m some rose tinted/everything was better back in the day type…..lots of things were worse then. Discovery was way harder, took effort. You might find a community, forum, site, whatever, only for it to die immediately. The internet was harder to navigate, harder to maintain, less stable, and oh yeah, no streaming video.
Still miss it. If I could hit a button to revert to back then, I would. Even with the trade offs.
Clear_Economics7010
No barriers to entry. Some wacko in a basement would have a website that looked more professional than a university. You would end up reading something only to realize halfway through it was the manifesto of a insane person not an actual PhD.
starkeffect
Having to learn HTML since there was no website-creation software yet.
FoodLionMVP
My friend and I went to a Better Than Ezra concert, and we loved their opening band so much we made an entire Geocities fan page for them. The band actually SIGNED OUR GUESTBOOK! We were maybe 14 years old? We were the coolest.
SnottyMonkey
What was rhe band? I was randomly listening to Better Than Ezra when I read this comment, true story.
FoodLionMVP
The band was called “Convoy.” They had an album called “Black Licorice” that was released around the turn of the century. I don’t know if they were ever heard from again but we definitely had that CD.
No-Author-2358
I first got online in 1993. There was no web browser – it was just typing on a green or amber screen monitor.
The Internet was like DOS. Except you could chat and interact with people all over the planet. Text only.