Person Asks “What’s So Ancient Only Internet Veterans Can Remember?”, 30 Folks Deliver
Nostalgia is a weird feeling.
When you’re young, you don’t really have anything to feel nostalgic about, and hearing your patents feel it so much so as to preach “the good old days” was, at the very least, annoying.
Well, now, 30 to 40 years later, you find yourself understanding the thing your parents felt all this time as you now begin reminiscing about everything that was cool about the early days of the internet (and tech of the time in general), and then you realize you have become your parents as you fight and possibly fail to push away that relentless urge to preach about the good old days.
Speaking of which, Redditors have recently been listing old-timer things from when the internet was young, wild and free. User Marambal17 went to AskReddit with the question “what is so ancient only an internet veteran can remember?”, and got loads of answers from said internet veterans.
Bored Panda gathered them all up oh so nostalgically and created a curated list for you to peruse. And while you’re at it, go vote, go comment, and tell everyone what’s an ancient piece of internet or other technology that you fondly remember from several decades ago!
More Info: Reddit
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Winamp
awesabre said:
Winamp. It really whips the lamas a&s. So much time perfecting skins.
KlaatuBrute replied:
> "So much time perfecting skins."
Honestly that's kind of one of the things I miss the most about old internet—everything was unique down to the individual user. Flashing marquees, neon text on a different neon color background, dancing gifs everywhere. The entire internet had this cobbled-together look like an old alley in Hong Kong.
Now everything looks the same, like digital urban sprawl.
The Internet Can't Work If Someone's Using The Landline
Conny_and_Theo said:
Having to make sure no one is on the phone so you can use the internet.
ltBurnsWhenlPvP replied:
When I set up our internet for the first time mid 90s I accidentally had it calling a long distance number. Dad received a phone bill for $2800. We no longer had the internet in our house after that.
The noise as the dial-up connection was made is burned in my memory.
Website Visitor Counters
grendel54 said:
Counters on webpages.
Wildcat_twister12 replied:
When doing research online—Wow this site has had 300,000 people visit, the information must be legit.
And if you created a web page then half of the count was you opening the page to check the counter.
Custom Mouse Cursors
Blackout1322 said:
When we used to risk getting viruses just to get cool cursors.
AmoreLucky replied:
Or smileys for your instant messenger like AIM, MSN, or Yahoo Messenger.
Dial-Up Internet
ThisBroDo said:
Dial up.
ResponsibleBase replied:
And that unforgettable tone sequence while connecting!
Having To Type Out The Beginning Of Each Website
Having to actually type out “http://www.” before entering the website.
Some websites still require the .www if they havent put the redirection to the website without www in place.
MapQuest Struggles
ItsBulkingSeasonLads said:
If going on a long car journey, having to print off directions from MapQuest.
keb1965 replied:
And the first three pages were how to get out of your driveway.
When you printed the directions, you also printed all the pages with header, each advert, and literally anything shown on the screen.
Desktop Themes For Windows
Remember desktop themes? Changing all your icons, mouse pointer, computer sounds, etc., to images and sounds from, like, Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist or whatever.
Not Being Able To Play Flash Games Any More
joothinkso said:
Not being able to play flash games until the flash player had been updated.
the_hell_you_say replied:
Having to update flash player every time you turned the computer on.
drunk98 replied:
[That thing] updated hourly & never got any better, it's like me if I was an app.
RealPlayer
Orinocobro said:
Real Player.
Also: uninstalling Real Player.
UebelKanuebel replied:
Yeah. And Quicktime.
1Eternallylost replied:
Reminds me of those postage stamp sized movies at 6 fps.
Bringing Your Computer To A Friend's House To Play Multiplayer
Having to physically carry your computer around to a friend's house if you wanted to play multiplayer
Ask Jeeves
sev45day said:
Ask Jeeves.
Sht_Hawk replied:
I remember me and a friend using Ask Jeeves at school and thinking we had to type things in as questions.
Sad_Ambassador4096 replied:
2nd grade our teacher polled the class what to ask Jeeves because we thought we only got one question.
We went with: "Jeeves, why is it called a pair of pants but not a pair of shirt?"
Cleaning The Gunk Out Of The Mouse
gfyans said:
Having to clean the gunk out of your trackball mouse with your fingernail.
Jrxbrg replied:
I am so glad I don’t have to boil eggs for the new mouse balls anymore.
lightbulbfragment replied:
Really had to boil them a long time to get that good gray color and rubbery texture.
The Hamster Dance
DriveCreepy9057 said:
Hamster dance is one I think of a lot.
Wyattbw09 replied:
Badger,Badger,Badger.
Woofles85 replied:
MUSHROOM MUSHROOM!
tiditidatiditidooouuu tiiiiiidatididouuuuu titititidi didididadidididooooouuuuuu ahahahaha
AOL's Promotional Media
Keithninety said:
Floppy disks and CD’s that came in the mail containing 500 free hours from AOL.
HatchlingChibi replied:
One of my sisters friends decorated their dorm with those. They stuck them on the ceiling and had enough to cover the whole thing. It was interesting decor.
Under Construction Gifs For Geocities
Lindseykkl said:
You forgot the construction worker excavating gifs and the under construction banner!
ricottapie replied:
Please sign the guest book!
discerningpervert replied:
Geocities was the [shirt]
Unclaimed Usernames
R33Gtst said:
Signing up for a new email address and the username not already being taken.
Glorious times.
notyounaani replied:
I took like every free email with my first name and my first name and surname combination which was a mastermind move when I was 12. Sucks to be whoever has the same name as me though.
My mail address at Yahoo is only 6 characters long. SIX characters! I got it in 1999 and I'm still using it.
Invitations to GMail
Having to be invited to GMail.
I remember getting invited to Google Beta, my cousin said its going to be big. Little did I know...
A/S/L, or Age/Sex/Location (primarily used on ICQ)
Ambitious_Nobody7698 said:
A/S/L.
SurferRosa85 replied:
I definitely inflated my A from 11 to 16 in the early days of ICQ.
injury_minded replied:
Using 16/f/Cali when I was really 11/f/middle of nowhere, because I just had to seem cool and sophisticated to everyone else in the chatroom.
Ye Olde ALT+F4 Trick On AOL Chatrooms
Going into AOL chatrooms and saying, "Hey! They put a fireworks show into the chat! Hold Alt and hit F4 and you'll see it!"
Then watching as, one-by-one, chatroom participants disappeared.
Searching Music CDs For "Extras"
usspaceforce said:
Putting a music CD into the computer to check out the "extras" only for it to load way too slow to do anything with.
FrogLegsAlwaysFresh replied:
The limited addition Deftones album White Pony had a little game on it. I had forgotten all about that, thanks for reminding me!
SyrupBuccaneer replied:
Back To School's single CD doubled as an Electronic Press Kit which was pretty novel and forward-thinking.
Oldschool Website Programming
Old websites written in a notepad file with basic HTML using tables for spacing/formatting and images that took forever to load. This included lower than lo-fi midi audio files that auto played when the site loaded and "webring" affiliation links at the bottom of the page.
People thought making a personal page look professional meant it looked like a newspaper column with a "table of contents" link list on the left side in traditional roman numeral style list.
You still can write websites using notepad if you are really really really motivated.
The Encarta Encyclopedia Mindmaze Game
jolloholoday said:
Encarta.
JerseyJedi replied
Anyone else remember that trivia game built into Encarta, where you had to answer trivia questions to get through this castle where everyone was basically frozen creepily into place and couldn’t be freed unless you made it to the end?
cherrytarts replied:
You mean MindMaze? Young nerdy me loved that game.
Pool By Yahoo! Chatrooms
superwholockian62 said:
Playing pool in yahoo chat rooms.
Korncakes replied:
Oh man my buddy and I would play Yahoo pool for hours every day after school while simultaneously grinding on RuneScape together back in junior high/high school. Dude lived like two blocks away and we spent more time playing games online than hanging out in person.
"Turning On" The Internet
Actually having to "switch on" the internet. Opening the shortcut, typing password and clicking connect and then waiting for the dubstep music to finish.
Auto-diallers did exist. We had one at work. Whenever one of the machines wanted to send an off-network packet, it would dial up the modem. Mainly it only did it for sending and receiving email, but if you opened a web browser (Netscape Navigator) and gave it an off-network address, it would also do it. Really only practical with a dedicated phone line.
Online Bulletin Boards
Dialing into the bulletin board.
I'm aware this is not technically the internet, but it was a precursor and one of the things that made the internet possible.
Neopets
Qthaker283 said:
Neopets!
glennjersey responded
[DANG IT], I FORGOT TO FEED MY NEOPETS!
Alta Vista Search And Babelfish
Eastern-Release4441 said:
Alta Vista.
ShadyFigure said:
And their Babelfish, the precursor to Google Translate.
Hashpool replied:
Wow when I was in middle school in 2005 they started using a network wide block for all the schools. I remember using Babelfish and other websites that translated well websites and we could circumnavigate around that [nonsense] for a while. Of course they eventually caught in on it. What a time!
StickDeath, A Stick Figure Flash Animation Website
Stickdeath.com. flash animations of stick figures being killed in funny ways.
At work I had a program that made cute little animated sheep drop in and walk all over the screen. They ate, pooped, jumped and did all the sheepy things. It kept me smiling.
Multi User Domains/Dungeons (MUDS)
MUDS.
Multi User Domains/Dungeons. They were the text only precursors to games like WOW and Everquest.
Surpised Napster isn't listed. Using that on dial-up was a b***h.....waiting god knows how long for the slightest bit of download to appear just to catch the first 3 seconds of a song to make sure it was the right one you wanted
And then finding out it was just a virus that infected your parents computer with porn ads.
LimeWire was always a slightly safer alternative
Or juuuuust as it was about to finish someone unplugged your net to make a phonecall.
These were at least able to restart where they left off, but good old internet explorer? Any disconnect, start again! When I discovered downloader that could restart a session even next day, that was a revelation. I could download more than a short song at 128!
Following that, Kazaa and Limewire. If you were unlucky you'd get the song download with the anti-pirating tones throughout the song. Then you had to either try again... or just keep it and ignore the beeping. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit how many times I said eff it and kept the messed up version lol.
Yes. Napster was the only place to download music and videos back then.
And laughing at everyone who used Kazaa 🤣
I resisted Napster for the most part, but when someone on my undergrad network had 10g of MP3 just sitting in a shared folder, you can bet I grabbed that fast.
Going to a company website and actually being able to see real contact details instead of being sent round in circles or a stupid form that does not work.
Where is limewire ans happytreefriends?
I believe limewire died from all the viruses it had.
It should have gotten vaccinated :(
So should a lot of the early internet. I remember when Kaspersky was legit the best antivirus around. Like, legit Russian hackers made the best antivirus there was.
Foamy the squirrel from illwillpress
My son is 13 and is very much a Happy Tree Friends fan!
Happy tree friends is as popular as it always was - in other words, not very but plenty of people know of it. My sister and like half her class in school have at least seen it. I actually didn't learn about it until after her.
Surpised Napster isn't listed. Using that on dial-up was a b***h.....waiting god knows how long for the slightest bit of download to appear just to catch the first 3 seconds of a song to make sure it was the right one you wanted
And then finding out it was just a virus that infected your parents computer with porn ads.
LimeWire was always a slightly safer alternative
Or juuuuust as it was about to finish someone unplugged your net to make a phonecall.
These were at least able to restart where they left off, but good old internet explorer? Any disconnect, start again! When I discovered downloader that could restart a session even next day, that was a revelation. I could download more than a short song at 128!
Following that, Kazaa and Limewire. If you were unlucky you'd get the song download with the anti-pirating tones throughout the song. Then you had to either try again... or just keep it and ignore the beeping. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit how many times I said eff it and kept the messed up version lol.
Yes. Napster was the only place to download music and videos back then.
And laughing at everyone who used Kazaa 🤣
I resisted Napster for the most part, but when someone on my undergrad network had 10g of MP3 just sitting in a shared folder, you can bet I grabbed that fast.
Going to a company website and actually being able to see real contact details instead of being sent round in circles or a stupid form that does not work.
Where is limewire ans happytreefriends?
I believe limewire died from all the viruses it had.
It should have gotten vaccinated :(
So should a lot of the early internet. I remember when Kaspersky was legit the best antivirus around. Like, legit Russian hackers made the best antivirus there was.
Foamy the squirrel from illwillpress
My son is 13 and is very much a Happy Tree Friends fan!
Happy tree friends is as popular as it always was - in other words, not very but plenty of people know of it. My sister and like half her class in school have at least seen it. I actually didn't learn about it until after her.